KOCHI: Fugue in psychiatry is a loss of awareness of one’s identity and is associated with certain forms of hysteria. Exploring this unusual dissociative personality disorder is Fugue, written and directed by Vivek Joseph, a final year MBBS student of Thiruvananthapuram Medical College. The film, which released the other day, touches upon the subject in a subtle way, haunting the viewer. For its treatment, the film has garnered a number of accolades.
Bearing a semblance to a musical composition of the same name with even the background music, it is not surprising when the 16-minute films is treated in the same mood. “’Fugue’ is a term more associated with music. While there are a few basic musical symphonies including the ones by Mozart and Beethovan, a ‘Fugue’ composition starts with one particular symphony, which will then be interrupted by another note. Eventually it reaches a point where one is not able to understand or recall its essence, so much so that it looses its identity. It is as if it even never existed,” says Vivek.
The story is told from the viewpoint of a girl named Ashley. It begins with her speaking to the doctor where she zooms on her relationship with a man named Roy. Eventually shocked after learning shocking facts about Roy, ‘Fugue’ treads upon the helplessness and despair she is exposed to. Regarding the initial concept for the development of the film, the director says, “There have been moments for everyone where we faked something. For some people, however, telling others an idea or thing that is fake is more important. We wanted to depict this through our work. We found that ‘Fugue’ was something that came close to the concept.”
Syamaprakash M S, Rashmi K Nair, Harikrishnan and Aswathy Mukundan have acted in the film. Nimish Ravi has handled the cinematography whereas the editing is by Christy Sebastian. The background score is set by Arun Varghese. Muhammed Shaffi and K J Varughese produced the short film under the banner of Thira Movie Labs.
Vivek says he had always wanted his film to linger on the viewers’ minds. “Films made by veteran directors like Padmarajan had always inspired me. I believe the success of his films, for instance Thoovanathumbikal, lie in the fact that they never had happy endings. When a movie has a happy ending, you think no more of it once you leave the cinema hall. But sad endings haunt you.”
Now that ‘Fugue’ is released, Vivek is more confident of pursuing scripting and filmmaking along with a medical career. The work has gathered around 38 prizes including best film amd screenplay, along with being officially selected for screening in a number of short film festivals. The prizes include for Best Film, Don Bosco International Shortfilm Festival, Best Director, Take one Ragam NIT Calicut, Best Script, film ferry shortfilm festival, Finalist at the Fefka directors Union Shortfilm Festival 2017, Official entry, COINS, Sri Lanka, Haryana and Kolkata International Shortfilm Festival and more. It was also officially selected to the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival 2017.