KOLKATA: The Nandan screening of 'My Son and His Grandfather' at the 5th South Asian Short Film Festival has explored the universal theme of the empty nest syndrome of grandparents in nuclear families. Completed during the pandemic, the film is about an octogenarian in a middle-class Bengali household pining for his grandson. What begins as a personal film or 'the cinema of me', becomes a metaphor for the untold story of many grandparents across the globe and how they struggle with pangs of separation.
In most cases, empty-nest syndrome is associated with parents when children grow up or leave. Little is said about how doting grandparents deal with this absence. For them, the presence of grandchildren gives them a new lease of life. Hence, the sudden absence of the child gives a jolt to their new identity, making life and living difficult. Perhaps this is the first time that a film has tapped into such a subject while banking on restraint and minimalism. "At the recent Mumbai International Film Festival screening, I was overwhelmed when someone from the audience came up to me crying and said that she was moved by the film since it is a real problem in her country too,” said visual communicator-and-director Bijoy Chowdhury.
Feeling an absence is one thing, and expressing it visually without getting indulgently melodramatic is quite another. Tajdair Junaid's music and Mithun Pramanik's editing have ensured the film never wallows in sadness. What makes it stand out are Chowdhury's poetic black-and-white still and moving images. They have been lyrically strung together to create a juxtaposition of tender memories of togetherness between the grandpa (Dinesh Chandra Chowdhury) and grandson (Akash), and the former's loneliness when the boy is sent off to a boarding school. Intimate moments of bathing together or even having mock tiffs over a dog next door are captured with tenderness. "I started shooting this film 10 years ago when my 10-year-old son went to a boarding school in Kurseong, and finished filming before I lost my father during the pandemic last year," said Chowdhury.
Reclining on the bed, the old man stares at his grandson’s scribbles on a wall. On another, he spots a sheet of paper where the little one had revised his algebra equations. There are toys left behind in his room. Covered in cobwebs and dust, they lie unattended. Almost like fossils. They are completely cast away for months till a day comes when the child in him turns the key to make a clown clap. At that moment, the old man becomes a metaphor for grandparents who helplessly fumble with emptiness.
