Most painfully shy introverts are deaf to the machinations of destiny. If the universe sends them signs, they are likely to miss them if it threatens to disrupt their social averseness. Their fragile confidence prevents them from “seizing” opportunities that others leap at. They tend to occupy the front seats of an UberPool ride to avoid small talk with fellow passengers. They choose private rooms instead of hostels while traveling. Very rarely do they put themselves in a position to even recognise potential partners. Which is why many of them make careers out of romanticising the “what ifs” of this condition – through words and literature and movies.
But not all introverts are fortunate enough to celebrate their deficiencies through non-confrontational mediums of art. Some are forced to operate in an environment that fails to understand them. As a result, this lack of self-awareness amounts to an existence that needs little mo re than a push to realise their future – especially on the personal front. It needs a little more than luck; it needs some magic.
Study in contrast
Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi’s Golden Bear-winning On Body And Soul – a crowd favourite at the 2017 Mumbai Film Festival – beautifully explores these contrivances of fate in context of socially defective personalities. Serendipity has long been cinema’s favourite activator of resolution. Entire romances have pivoted around chance meetings and convenient coincidences. But there are also those who need more than a wink of providence. Such is the case of a handicapped Endre (Géza Morcsányi) and an autistic Mária (Alexandra Borbély). He is older, jaded, divorced, reserved and the financial director of a slaughterhouse. She is young, awkward, enigmatic, reclusive and his new quality-control inspector. His is a damaged body, and hers is a damaged soul. The traditional rules of movie unions are lost upon them. And yet, Enyedi crafts a hypnotic film that accommodates two film pariahs – sheltering two hearts systematically rejected by every love story ever written.
First, she highlights the sheer unfeasibility of their circumstances. Early on, the film exposes us to a brutally silent routine of an unsuspecting cow being slaughtered right until its ruptured carcass spews blood – as if challenging us to imagine the kind of desensitised human temperaments conditioned to inhabit this “business”. Hence, for Endre and Mária, simply working together doesn’t guarantee any sparks; such an environment ensures that it will be even more difficult to “find” each other in plain view. That they spend their waking hours in a profession training them to feel lesser only diminishes the possibility of a natural awakening.
Catalyst for love
Enyedi, though, devices the requisite “magic” – the little extra needed – in the form of shared dreams. From the day Mária joins the company, both of them have the same dream: of being a curious deer admiring a new entrant in a snowy forest. A bashful craving for companionship manifests through this wintry dreamscape. Every night, the stag and doe grow closer. They observe and follow each other. But at work, they become deer caught in the headlights. Theirs is an impossibly old-school metaphor for, say, leading an after-hours double-life by intimately exploring each other in anonymous web chatrooms.
But there’s a predicament. Endre and Mária aren’t aware of this mystical attachment. So the stars must align twice over to help them. A subplot appears: A psychologist is brought in to investigate the theft of a bovine aphrodisiac. It is during these stringent psychiatric evaluation interviews that the two accidentally discover their bizarre bond. Endre’s colleague, therefore, unwittingly becomes the catalyst of their story; if he hadn’t stolen the product, they would never have viewed each other any differently. In a way, this is an introverted reimagining of a famous movie template – the equivalent of two soul mates missing the bus, only to have a friend’s mishap unite them in the consequent traffic jam.
They coyly discuss these dreams every morning, as if they were teenaged video-game junkies dissecting their virtual-reality “Sims” avatars. They feel obligated to consider a real-life romance; after all, how many introverts are blessed with unique powers? She is obligated to change, to buy a phone, to choose a love song, and to feel – happiness, confusion, betrayal or fondness. But she isn’t equipped to associate appropriate reactions and moments to these feelings; a sad song might score her dizzy excitement as well as anxiety attacks, while uneasy silence might score her longing and stolen phone calls.
Reinforcing magic
It’s this pressure of discovering one another – and the fear of finally knowing they are special, like the last two of their kind – that eventually defines their togetherness. If it was magic that brought them together, it’s passionate magic they hope to create. But they, too, like many of us, must navigate the disillusioning chasm between expectations and reality. They must locate a way to reconcile with the truth that to love each other for who they are, they need to stop dreaming about who they wish they were; that it isn’t the duty to live those dreams but the failure to emulate them that’s destined to bind them together; and that perhaps it’s the missed chances and stubborn solitude that actually leads to the one chance worth taking, and the one friend worth making.
Many of us want to believe there’s one moment – a disarming signal – that triggers a surge of sudden compatibility. Sentences that end with “this was when I realised we were meant to be” elevate love to a form of artful cognisance. But a film like this disregards the singularity of cinematic love, by allowing characters to wallow in its organic ambiguity. It assures us that falling for someone, too, can be a reluctant choice disguised as a special emotion. It’s to Enyedi’s distinguished credit that “special” here comes across as more of the flawed-superhero brand than the tragic-disability prototype. His deformed hand feels like a burdened cape, and her crippling mindscape feels like an impenetrable shield.
Towards the end, we see her fingers gently cradle his limp palm to retrieve it from the edge of the bed. Their superpowers have vanished. They’d rather share a blanket than a dream. Ever so slowly, Endre and Mária have logged off the chatroom. Because even though destiny assumes the responsibility of leading bodies to each other, it’s the souls that are accountable for peeking into each other.
