Sarcasm of Existence: The Elysian Field

In his fourth feature film Pradip Kurbah traces human relationship with a sense of community amidst changes, loss and disappearance. Known for his soft storytelling, all based on silhouetted characters against contemporary reality, the Shillong-based filmmaker’s The Elysian Field (Khasi title Ha Lyngkha Bneng) revolves around six village folk. They are the last natives of a remote place where the remains of abandoned houses signify cityward ho of all their near and dear ones.    


In the very beginning a passenger dismounts a coffin from a vintage bus arriving in the village. A motley group of youngsters singing a choir is visible in the spot. Three men from a distance come forward to help the stranger carry the coffin. The camera catches a vast plateau, narrow pathways and half-made concrete footbridge evoking isolation and underdevelopment of the place. The foursome passes through a menacing distance on foot finally reaching a house to rest the coffin. Livingstone is the bereaved man who brought in it his late city-dweller wife Belinda; and when it is taken for burial the grave-sign shows 2047 as the year of her death, meaning exactly a hundred year of the country’s Independence.


The sign-function fortifies an indictment of failures at material progress. The losses encountered by the villagers and their fears, hopes and ecstasies all attain special meanings because of the time frame the filmmaker chose. A senior citizen among them, Complete by name, takes the trouble of trying his best to lodge complaints over intermittent power cuts, despite the mobile phone network seldom working. Although he has a rented house in the city he prefers to stay in the village. The old man once lost his goat and till the end he searches for it, which coalesces into an allegory of desperate yearning for love, care and solace. Livingstone too cares for his mother Helen, a retired school teacher, another reason behind his rootedness to his ancestral land.


Significantly, a Latin song sung by the choir group— not a Khasi or an English number— illuminates not just a sidelight of the initial sequence, it becomes a motif later on. It implies an unavoidable inclusivity, not a belief in the Christian spirit alone. Nevertheless, conversation indicates a past when Complete as the village headman stood against outsiders’ move to settle in the locality. With forced isolation playing a part, the social hierarchy comes to such a pass that only six remaining people are attendants in the local church with Complete rendering the services of the pastor. The church itself looks deserted, standing alone in its natural setting. The choir group appears to be a catalyst between the past and present generations, the real and metaphysical worlds, but only when somebody is close to death. One of them is Friday who occasionally witnesses the Carol singers till he dies of alcoholism. So does Livingstone’s mother who seems to witness the choir as an angel before breathing her last.


Their scepticism leads to digging graves for themselves lest losing any one may render the task overburdened for the remaining few! Friday in a scene rebuilds the front-door of a dilapidated house: the absurdity in this act— for the house does not have its roof, its walls are in decaying state—has other contours. Relationship with his wife Maia is totally dysfunctional, they do not even talk to each other. His ineffable feeling for Maia is disabled by silence that may be examined in customary matriarchal state of living. Their conjugal life is not shaped by what is called ‘toxic masculinity’. And yet Friday’s death causes a kind of resurrection in Maia; she transforms herself to a free-spirited soul occasionally mixing in community-feast and merrymaking, dancing, drinking and smoking no bar, eventually recharging an irresistible but innocent jealousy among her neighbours Livingstone and Promise. She is caring for them, but when one of them asks who she would prefer, Maia said, “Myself”, asserting her regained self-awareness and a special bonding to whoever it concerns. Not so earlier, Livingstone also made sure that the bonding survived when it was threatened by an over-jealous Promise.
 

 The film captures the beauty of Meghalaya’s Sohra region shot in different seasons of a year with emotional transformation at the core of the visual layout. The narrative approach is powered by long takes; the director’s long time visual associate Pradip Daimary’s camera expropriates the rhythm of the exteriors and the interiors with equal elan. For an informed viewer Abbas Kiarostami’s and Wong Kar-Wai’s style might come alive in some of the shots both in spatial and temporal terms. The ensemble cast is deeply authentic, as a sense of naturalism empowers the actors not to ‘perform’ but to become the characters themselves, making the audience feel like they too are part of the mise-en-scene. All said, the scenario sticks to the locality as if a stage itself where the roles are enacted, antagonising the Shakespearean restate “All the world’s a stage”— neither the camera cares for leaving the locale though the dialogueseven reveal an ongoing judicial matter involving Livingstone and his step sons as the latter forged their mother Belinda’s signature to sell off her house in the city. Over and above all this, the narrative also allows the tradition-bound bus reappearing like one solemn character.
 

The feeble phone connectivity apart, the power cuts pose a metaphor of fragile presence and relationship and frailty of memory too. Livingstone says, “You cannot say that you are really alive when you do not forget things.” The metaphor also functions as a deliberate political statement, implying an utter failure of the systems that be, with the local MLA mentioned as sole authority for restoring power supply. Having that: Promise’s constant checking of power supply-line is utilised to add a sense of humour to the text. As he suspects Livingstone trying to get closer to Maia since Friday’s passing away, Complete’s blatant reaction is that he is also frequently seen at Maia’s house; that moment the torchlight accidentally slips to the ground from Promise’s hand as if he is caught unaware. As Complete quotes Helen to tell that Livingstone has developed a feeling for Maia, that very moment the electric power line Promise is handling has got a horrifying spark.
 

The characters refuse to part with whatever they possess and nurture— the ever-present beards of the males epitomises their sense of attachment to everything they possess. But, is there any other reason to stay heavily bearded? Just to show they are exhausted? The poet would say, no man is an island, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main, courtesy John Donne. So why is that specific look? Behemoths of isolated extremity? A symbolic gesture to disparity (radio bulletins announce progress somewhere) or, disdain for the city goers’ mindset?
 

Sometimes silence speaks more than the dialogues, while subtle details like the radio hum or a creaking windmill convey a rhythm of the village life. Eventually many notions and expectations are broken in The Elysian Field. How Maia behaves in the face of adversity is a perfect pointer in this direction. Complete tells her, “Look at you, will anyone say you are grieving for Friday’s death?” Maia’s instant reply: “I am not sad because I don’t look for happiness where I lost it.” The inherent philosophy is heard or seen later on when she refuses to get enticed by her two male counterparts.
 

As par defiance of the clichés of cinematic tales, rejecting typically-accepted narratives, the film is not only a sign of originality, it can be perceived as postmodernism in films. A postmodernist view involves the world with a hint of detached irony with no melodrama, no plot claim in the script. The sense of isolation fails to subside even as the almost empty bus continues to serve as the only means for the village to physically connect to the outside world. Another void on display is expressed in Maia’s words, “Every empty bottle is filled with stories,” as Livingstone helps her clear a garbage of liquor bottles. The film records a strong statement with undertones of existential concern, mortality and melancholy.
    

The Elysian Field(2025) had its world premiere at the 47th Moscow International Film Festival and it went on to win three major awards there—Best Film, Best Director and the NETPAC award for Best Asian Film— which is a record for any Indian entry at such a major international event. Kurbah’s debut feature Ri: Homeland of Uncertainty (2013)dealt with the idea of freedom and insurgency in Meghalaya while Onataah: Of the Earth (2016) depicted a young rape survivor facing reality and Iewduh (2019) focused on everyday life of people of a bustling Shillong market, all three national award winner as best regional film.