15 Park Avenue – What is reality?

I had written this a long time back when I caught this brilliant work and posted somewhere on the net too and in my old blog which went dormant and locked later. So I had to post this again. Such masterwork the film! It was one of the most touching films I have seen. The dialogue delivery was a bit dragging at places still that didn’t take the essence of the film away. The ending is kind of open to interpretations and I love when a movie ends that way. You feel like catching the story teller and question them

My take on the film (with spoilers):

I thought that most part of the film was Anju’s (Shabana Azmi) imagination. She is the schizophrenic. There are many references of her being overbearing and tough. This is mentioned many times by different people. May be some of the characters were not even real and existed only in her imagination like Rahul Bose’s Jojo. Konkana Sen was probably her imagination too or her sister who moved away to New York and lived in 15 Park Avenue with her happy family. Why would the doctor be always with Shabana? He was most certainly her Psychiatrist.

Shabana was married once but they never say why she got divorced? She is shown as teaching Quantum Mechanics as a Physics Professor. Quantum mechanics arise from the mathematics of parallel universes. So was Shabana living in a parallel universe of her own? Towards the end we see the doctor entering the house which Konkana Sen had supposedly entered, the white house with black rods gate marked as No. 15. The doctor then comes out with the old lady which clearly indicated that Konkana Sen never went inside or even existed. That house belonged to someone else.

Then we hear Shabana frantically asking for 15 Park Avenue. The tremble in her voice was disturbing. We see Doctor taking her away from the crowd. A real masterpiece by Aparna Sen!

I believe the main point about the film is a schizophrenic creates her own world and characters. They are real to her. Who is to say that her world is unreal and ours is real? So I believe Aparna Sen left that for us to interpret. With that ending she just made the real world a paradox.

Aparna Sen’s take on 15 Park Avenue: “15 Park Avenue’ is about the human situation that arises from the medical crisis. One of the basic themes in the film is the question of reality… the sick girl’s reality and that of others around her. Who’s to say which is more real? This is a question that has been bothering me for a long time. We’re all searching for the core reality that we can’t find.”