Movie : Wake up Sleeping Beauty
Director : Shila Ommi
A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out…”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
How long must one wait before one realises her moment of true awakening?
Wake up Sleeping Beauty is a story of reawakening told in the form of a psychological drama. Many eminent thinkers believed that in order to exist in a society, one must have two bodies (two different conscious entities). The real body that encapsulates all the real desires of a human being, and the socio-political body that must consciously suspend every primeval instincts and behave like one is ‘expected’ to behave in a ‘civilised’ society. The director very dexterously constructs a tale of such profound realisations that would eventually lead one to question her very existence till a certain point of time. The protagonist is made to realise this in the form of a conversation at first and then an occurrence suggesting a potent epiphany.
The movie beautifully suggests how difficult it is to survive in a place by perpetually suppressing one’s real intentions, her hopes, her dreams. It would, as suggested in the movie, lead one towards an abyss of darkness where one shall be in despair. Despair that is referred to by readers of the mind as depression. The movie depicts the state of one such person who realises the reason she had been living with such an opulent amount of fear and anxiety. Towards the end, the epiphany turn the tables around and the protagonist rises in strength to deliver a powerful speech about how a ‘civilised’ society seldom addressed issues like mental health and depression. How a society makes us forget about how beautiful we are, what we could have been if we embraced our true selves. The movie has been well supported by good performances from the actors. The direction appears without a flaw as well. It is a well told story with a clear message that should bring people back to themselves, the ones they abandoned long time back.
