An Interpretation

I came across this short film called 'Epilogue' in a review writing competition. I was supposed to write the review of this in 40 minutes. But the short film, without dialogues and seemingly without a plot, left me intrigued and I soon found myself writing an interpretation of what I watched instead of reviewing it. The director leaves the door ajar for the viewer and lets him enter the story from whichever way he chooses to. So here is my interpretation of this 15 minute short film.


(If you haven't watched Epilogue, given below is the YouTube link for the same. Watch it before reading the interpretation.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Nouv1RTI

I understand the film to be a take on homosexuality in our society. The man played by Arjun Shrivastav is shown unhappy and grumpy as he is always engaged in a battle with the truth of his sexuality. The mysterious woman played brilliantly by Richa Chadda is neither his wife nor his love interest but his feminine self. The ever smoking society sweeper, who always crosses path with the man, stands for the society of our times.

The short film chronicles the daily life of a man unable to embrace his homosexuality. While he manages to keep his feminine side at bay in the public sphere, it is when he enters the privacy of his four walls that he is confronted with his feminine side and his struggle begins. The bizarre sequence of him opening the fridge to find a woman inside is suggestive of him keeping his feminine side hidden once he is out in the public sphere. Besides, his excessive smoking is symbolic of his efforts at connecting with his masculine side of his personality.

But once home, there is a little peek into his feminine side that we get through his fondness for self grooming. And there are efforts by the feminine side to take over as depicted in the scene where he keeps trying to light his cigarette but isn’t allowed to. The recurrence of the sweeper is nothing but a reminder to the protagonist of the society he lives in. He encounters it every time he is outside. Although his job is to merely sweep, he is always shown a little intrigued and interested in the affairs of the man, pretty symbolic of our society. He is there in the background, but importantly, always there, just how societal norms are always there in an average human’s mind whenever he/she takes a decision.

The struggle of the unhappy and grumpy  man to embrace the other side of his sexuality shown throughout the short film ultimately comes to an end. But before the end, at 12:22 there is something that appears on the screen for a brief while – A poster of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Maybe, I’m reading too much into it but its appearance just before the scene where he locks the woman away is possibly a reference to the infamous Ludovico technique in the movie. Like Alex is forcibly ‘humanised’ in the movie, the protagonist in ‘Epilogue’ is also made to part with the reality of his sexuality. The corpse in the end symbolizes the death of his struggle to accept his sexuality. No wonder, the sweeper, our allegory for society, has a smile on his face in the end. His job is done.

But does the man find the woman in the refrigerator again upon coming back? Maybe, Yes.