AAMIS (A.K.A) Ravening (2019) is an Assamese drama written and directed by Bhaskar Hazarika, which follows around the life of Nirmali (Lima Das) who is a married Doctor & Sumon (Arghadeep Baruah) a PhD student who is working on thesis related to various cuisines and meat-eating habits of north-east people. This film explores layers of platonic love between the characters which has been developed along the way by their desire for food and their ability to listen & understand each other. Lima Das & Arghadepp in-spite of being debuts they have presented their characters very well, it doesn’t look unnatural.
“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe
This Film begins with montages followed by an Assamese folk song, which shows the daily routine of Nirmali – A pediatrician whose is busy with her profession and taking care of her daughter, Suman – An anthropology PhD student who goes out with friends to taste authentic meat which they call it as meat-club and a rickshaw guy travelling along the city. These montages will sum up everything that will be unfolded as the story takes it’s phase.
It is interesting that the Writer – Director Bhaskar has considered food as a foundation to build a story which will have compartments of platonic Love, Passion & Taboo. The unlikely actions of the characters are more convincing because Food & Hunger is used as a base. Food is the strongest desire for any living organism and it’s more stronger than the desire for Sex, also as Food is deeply rooted with culture and has also been a mean for human connection.
As the story is developed we learns their needs, Nirmali desires a companion who can listen to her and Sumon desires to explore the beauty of cuisines & a companion to share them with, they both satisfies their needs over their love for tasting meat. The bond and trust for each other builds as they proceeds from one meat to another, starting from rabbit, catfish to bat and so on. The more unauthorized the meat gets the more they trust and understand each other, which can be noticed that they stop justifying their action and accepts it easily.
It is strange though that Meat of Cow & Pig is not used in this movie, by not using, it makes them more Taboo than the meats used. Which mocks the diversity of Indian people and their acceptance to some culture and their cuisines.
This film gives us a chilling feels as it takes its phase to further events. When Nirmali is subjected to cannibalism, it is presented to us as an organised platter. Beautiful montages of food with soothing music by Quan Bay and images of Nirmali enjoying the essence of it and Sumon’s love for serving it. This films dig deep inside us by breaking all our morals by showing unusual/undesirable notion and demanding us to accept it and to go along their way. Nirmali who is well aware of consequence of gluttony as she says in early scenes to Sumon’s sick friend that “Meat isn’t the problem, Gluttony is” but yet falls victim for it and it turns very ugly eventually.
The beauty of this screenplay is that we are well informed on what was going to happen, just like his Sumon’s friend Elias Da, we knew it in our guts and we went along the way. Just as mentioned earlier it all sums up to the opening montages. Sumon & Nirmali turns their life upside down because of their routine, unhappy life of Nirmali, Sumon’s unconditional love for meat & it all ends with the Rickshaw guy being the final bait. Along the way Sumon also says “The definition of ‘Normal’ isn’t universal, When it comes to eating meat, what’s normal for you, maybe abnormal for others“, Which clearly hints that their desires may take dark paths and they end up tasting each others flesh but it didn’t come out from nowhere, we were well informed.
Ravening – A emotion of extremely hungry and hunting for prey. This emotion is very subjective in this Film, here the prey can be Nirmali to Gluttony or Sumon to the repressed society where he can’t openly express his love, the prey can be people around them, the rickshaw guy, their family, friends etc.
Overall this is truly an unusual film in India as it has done things which hasn’t been done before and desires wide recognition.
DAZED BY CINEMA 
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