This article is a film review of Neeraj Ghaywan’s 2017 short film Juice, explored through the lens of intersectionality with cinema, gender, and memory. It discusses the masterful piecing together of the shots and sequences in the film, which combined with brilliant acting impacts the mind of the viewer. The article also highlights the intensity of this impact on a female subjectivity growing up in the same cultural environment of the living room, through articulation of individual experience.
Recently someone asked me if I had watched Juice, the 2017 short film by Neeraj Ghaywan. I opened my mouth to say yes but stopped midway because I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what actually happened in terms of the plot. I was left open-mouthed with a faint but firm recollection of a group of men in the living room behaving like typical Indian uncles, asking for juice repeatedly, and finally, the woman puts the last glass of juice on the table with a loud resounding bang and drinks it up sitting in front of the men. After rewatching the short film, I surmised that the ‘loud resounding bang’ lay wrapped in the multiple layers of the intensely charged silence (filled with strained music) in the last scene.
Anyone with the faintest remembrance of the short film would know how different the plot is from what I have described above because there is no plot. I am surprised how it is not a documentary of some sort. Any female embodiment growing up in India doesn’t need to remember the names of the characters and their actions in sequential order in order to remember the essence of the film. Only the last scene stayed with me, albeit in a refigured metaphor. And only after re-watching the film (for writing this article), did I finally realize why my mind had significantly erased all actual dialogues and scenes or independently morphed them like the last scene- because it was all too terribly painful to watch and even more so to remember in exact details! This hints at why we remember what we remember and how cinema shapes our memory, intertwining it with our lived experience in an inseparable manner. For any person who dares to call themselves anything close to ‘feminist’, that film is painful more than relevant, painful because it is relevant.
Juice (2017) directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, written by Ranjan Chandel, Neeraj Ghaywan, and Suraj Majhi (screenplay) is fourteen minutes, forty seconds-long short film available on Royal Stag Barrel Select’s “LargeShortFilms” YouTube channel, and is about an evening “get-together” in a middle-class household in the twenty-first century. There are rooms for everyone in this so-called “get-together” (inter-room transgressions are prohibited): the men occupy the living room with the water cooler blowing in front of their faces, the children are tucked away in a bedroom with videogames (to keep them distracted) and the women (including a pregnant woman) are relegated to the “gaschamerish” kitchen, and constantly shuffle between these three spaces to hold the get-together, together.
The stark changes in camera movements and mise-en-scène of these spaces, portray the state of being of the individuals inhabiting them. The living room is spacious, well-lit, decorated to a certain ‘taste’ and naturally the individuals in that space are relaxed and fully satisfied so much so that they don’t bother to move or shift, even once, during the whole duration of the movie and remain laid-back (just as their conversation). The bedroom containing the children is bounded by walls on all sides which immediately reveal the “contained” and in certain ways imprisoned status of the kids in a postmodern get-together. The kitchen is a universe in itself, it is cramped more from six people inhabiting it simultaneously than from the lack of space. It is stuffy, hot, unbearable, and the banter between them proves equally intolerable. There is chaos brewing every second in the kitchen, which is dark with no bright hues and one can imagine the amalgamation of diverse odors like those of food and sweat in the environs. The camera movements in the living room are mostly wide-angle shots, pan-movement which contrasts with the intense close-ups of Shefali Shah and the other women. This highlights the alliance versus fragmentation of the male and female worlds, respectively, in the film (especially in the treatment meted out to Parbatiya, the house help). Children are shown sitting and lying on the bed, in still poses, which contrast their natural instincts of playfulness and motion. Sound plays one of the most powerful roles in the entire short film as it distinguishes not just the limits of each space but also the interconnections which are marked by overlaps like- calling for food, calling to reprimand the children running in the living room.
There is a moment in the film when the chicken roasting on the gas flame is likened to the constant badgering which “roasts” Manju (played by Shefali Shah)- physically and emotionally. The dramatic act of switching off the gas stove marks her rebellion and the turning point in the film. She is burning with anger and heat, and pours herself a glass of chilled juice and drags her own chair to stop just for a few seconds, on the periphery of the entrance to the living room. She is obviously considering the reactions of the men outside and has second thoughts about this spectacle of transgression in front of her husband and his colleagues.
The last scene is of striking importance because of the evolution of the eye contact of the female subjectivity. From the first frame where Manju is bending at the table level clearing plates and later squatting down to pour water into the cooler, in which, the origin of the gaze remains below the eye level of the men sprawled on the sofas and chairs, to the last scene when she looks at the men in the eye, seated at their height. Moreover, the women in the film appear to be perennially standing and the last scene marks a departure as Manju drags her own chair into the gathering, places, and positions it near the cooler (significantly not blocking the way for others to keep getting air). This one self-created seat is of huge symbolic importance and makes a lasting impression on the viewer’s mind. Especially for the feminist viewer, the entire film can be triggering, and even though the purpose of ‘good’ cinema, in general, is to give a jolt, Juice does more than that. It almost makes you grip the edges of your seat so tight that you fall upon your own self with that chair of entitlement shattered into pieces. I do not believe the film ends on a highly optimistic note even though the rebellion does not go unnoticed, but the “real” ending of the tale of every Indian household would begin once the guests depart and all walls of mutual respect and courtesy come crying down. Maybe the end isn’t supposed to look bright, because on the breakfast/lunch/dinner table that very day after watching the film, the female subjectivity experiences the film coming into life once more, and it gets replayed so many times that memory of the film remains dynamic, personal and ever-hazed.
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About the Author:
Pronita is currently studying English Literature at the University of Delhi. She is an art enthusiast with a love for writing, reading, and cinema. She hopes to debunk the multiple stereotypes associated with Humanities Studies and become a worthy English Professor to her future students. She can’t wait to meet them! On most days Pronita chooses sleep over everything else, and on some everything else oversleep.
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