Luke Morrison and the Drifted Minds
A still from the movie, Paanch.
Written & Directed by Anurag Kashyap.
Starring: Kay Kay Menon (Luke Morrison)
Aditya Shrivastava (Murgi)
Vijay Maurya (Pondi)
Tejaswini Kolhapure (Shiuli)
A demented recluse. A fear of conformity to the mundane. He does
not watch a replica of himself when he confronts a mirror, but a torn
side-effect of mankind appears clawing its way through the rustic glass. An
archetype for the breeders of cognitive dissonance, the only mirror he finds
virtuous is the red wall and the only Luke he finds on the
blood enveloped mirage, is the Satan. It’s no surprise that the drifted mind
finds his own mirror; paints his own picture.
I shall call it the Morrison effect. The ones whose minds have
been filtered dark, finds the estranged identity of Jim Morrison - their
sojourn. The former poet, one of the original Gods of Rock, the Club
27 Godfather, et cetra. It’s not the fame which advances a germinating
mind, like Luke, but a transformation that the latter is
supposed to evolve with. The transformation, that the ordinary world is
supposedly devoid of, but the world of Morrison entails.
Paanch, a movie written and
directed by Anurag Kashyap, deals with five misguided
youngsters whose ambitions turn from pursuing an ‘ideal’ society’s moralistic
career to dwelling in a Tarantino-friendly atmosphere.
The protagonist or the antagonist (depends on your mindset), Luke
Morrison portrayed by Kay Kay Menon is a cleverly
crafted character who subconsciously seeks to deepen the dimensions of
friendship with his mates while simultaneously, in a conscious effect,
jeopardises the juxtaposition of stoned, broke yet talented musicians of his
rock band. He forbids the inmates of his house of psychedelia and tension, to
enter his room; the room whose space only he could consume. Applying the subtle
tradecraft of movie direction, Kashyap does not let the
viewers get a glimpse of the inner chamber of Luke for quite a
while but forces us to focus on the living room. The room, which glitters with
the iridescence of the divergent, painted veil of Luke and Gainda(rhino), his
amigo.
Luke never got the chance of
leaving a crowd in consternation as what Jim did with the
infamous Miami concert. Luke never got his band’s song to hit the height of
numero uno nor did his song lit a fire across the youth’s conscious. Or I can
say that he never became the Morrison he aspired to be, but
experienced the catharsis in a fashion, inciting enough for the noir buffs.
Outrage over a weakling Pandya, playing The Doors’ classic: Roadhouse
Blues in a state of psychedelia, painting the masks of human deafness
on the canvas of the walls, bludgeoning and the sheer delight of murder. The
expressionless orders of his brain to commit the aforesaid deeds brought
the Morrison out of him.
In a wind inflicted space, the seed of anarchy must have deluded
him. The chaos of company, anti-socials as the comrade, the aesthetic grandeur
of the genre of Rock and the ever-pervading desire for blood, eased this wild
child’s dilemma. The parallel of pain and the masquerade of laughter, bullets piercing through the authority and the seeping infatuation for a broken bird (Shiuli)
became the music for the writer’s ear and delight to the viewers.
Luke’s friend Murgi, enacted by Aditya
Srivastava, confesses to a cop that he saw the VILLAINY on Luke’s face
when the latter bludgeoned the quarrelsome conductor, on the streets of Mumbai.
On an observer’s glance, what he actually saw was the mirror image (Satan with
a laugh) which Luke had painted on the wall and now observes every-damn-day. No
wonder, Luke’s amigo - Gainda instinctively declares
the painted Satan as Luke when the cop, or Luke’s future
murderee, inquires about the wall art.
We are born amidst coward choices and rusted actions. A different mind,
an outcast, a rebel, fades away to black and what is left is the victory of
‘humane’ sect of society. Many Lukes have been and are born and they taste the
sour syrup of death unlike others. The SOCIAL, NORMAL fella will call this
fate, the ‘just’ way, for the society and by the society. For the film’s Luke, it
would be the message painted on his room - the room forbidden to his mates - as
the director leads the focus to the saffron-red bathed wall of his chamber.
The message, displaying: the anguish of living the life, where
your talent is unappreciated but death, oh death becomes the alchemist,
transforming the stone-cold jinxed wings of this grey-tainted bird to a
phoenix; glorified and remembered by all.
