I had been listening to I Am’s OST for a few months and finally i found the movie, it was one movie i was looking forward to watching…!! The movie is about 4 individuals, it is 4 stories, it is 4 lives, … it is all about PEOPLE!! Though the people involved in the plot are from different corners of the country- Kolkata, Bangalore, Srinagar and Mumbai, with the stories ranging from artificial insemination, child abuse
and gay prostitution, they’re connected by a common thread of
disenchantment.
Onir’s I AM opens with a Rabindranath Tagore’s quote from Gitanjali, ‘Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high…’
Meet the ‘I’s:
I am Afia
The 1st story opens with Afia [Nandita Das] looking for a sperm donor to fulfill her wish of getting artificial insemination done. She meets her doctor, and insists on meeting the man before taking a call, which is how she meets Purab Kohli. They spend time getting to know each other, breaking barriers before going ahead with the procedure. Their relationship goes through a transformation at the fertility clinic while waiting for the doctor to come in.
I Am Megha
Megha [Juhi Chawla] is a Kashmiri Pundit battling with life and emotions after having been chased out of Jammu & Kashmir when the military took over the land. She goes back, meets their Muslim family friends Manisha Koirala but interacts with them quite curt and to the point. There is a lot of anger and resentment in her voice during the one day she spends in town.
I Am Abhimanyu
This is a story on Child abuse..the victim is Abhimanyu [Sanjay Suri] who grew up abused by his step-father on a day to day basis… He grows up bitter, severing all ties with his family, quite unsure of his sexual preferences.. The entire movie flows through the stories, while showing the different phases in Abhimanyu’s life, as the abused child going on to a manipulative adolescent and thence to whining adulthood, in a very short share of the total running time. It is only when his mom calls to announce his step father’s death that he finally confronts his demons and lets it all out to her…
I am Omar
This is probably the most devastating story in the movie, the one that will shake you up. It is about Gay relationships and this plot is about Jai (Rahul Bose) and Omar (Arjun Mathur)… Jai, who is obviously doing well in life meets Omar at a coffee shop one lazy evening. He is drawn to Omar, takes him out and giving into his strong feelings, wants to go all the way. Omar convinces him to just get naughty in his car, only to get accosted by a vulgar homophobic cop, who scares Jai beyond repair. It is later than Jai comes to know Omar is a con and was playing him all along… Abhimanyu Singh as the cop was so ruthless and brutal with his foul language and crude behaviour, quite revealing how people react when they come across a Gay guy…
I AM is more than a movie, it is not exactly a documentary either. It tells the tales of people we meet on a daily basis, but whose lives are so deep, and go beyond what we see on the surface. Each and every story has its own unique rhythm. The emotions and feelings, the experiences that each of the actors portray is quite surreal, making us think while the credits roll on the screen at the end of the movie…
Cast : Sanjay Suri, Radhika Apte, Shernaz Patel, Anurag
Kashyap, Rahul Bose, Arjun Mathur, Abhimanyu Shekhar Singh, Nandita
Das, Juhi Chawla, Manisha Koirala, Purab Kohli & Anurag Basu
Music : Amit Trivedi, Vivek Philip & Rajiv Bhalla
Director : Onir
Producer : Onir & Sanjay Suri
