The unassumingly titled Irani film 'Ashkan The Charmed Ring and other stories' follows the now-popular hyperlinked storytelling pattern that is not exactly episodic like 'Pulp Fiction' and not interconnected in a cyclic chain like 'Crash'. It follows its own unique style, intersecting individual episodes at several instances and going back and forth in time while following a non-linear narrative.
A disappointed sculptor wishes to immigrate. Two blind men decide to rob a jewelry shop. A policeman loves a saleswoman and his subordinate colleague loves a movie star. Two killers are reformed and become nice guys. A young man, who wants to commit suicide, causes some problems. However, everyone's destiny is changed when a strange fish is freed and a charmed ring is moved.
The film defies the traditional screen writing approach that needs lead characters to be well-established and the plot to have sufficient depth in it. The characters here are abruptly introduced and have no background account but one doesn't wish to know more about them beyond their contribution to the plot. Each of the subplots is short and shallow but the real beauty lies in the way it's interconnected with other subplots. The storytelling is erratic as it changes tracks and timeframes without any warning but when you comprehend its correlation to other tracks, it leaves you absolutely amazed. It's like solving a jigsaw puzzle or joining the dots where you excitement rises the more you get close to connecting the pieces.
Unlike most films in this storytelling pattern that attempt to become too dark or intense, there is an underlying tone of humour running throughout this film. And the humour is absolutely subtle coming out of real life events even in the most improbable of sequences like in a guy's attempt to commit suicide. Another scene has a policeman shopping repeatedly in a mall to bump into the girl at the counter who he loves.
One doesn't quite understand the use of black-and-white colour scheme as it doesn't add any visual appeal to the film. But the storytelling is so spellbinding that once you are glued to the narrative, you completely forget the monochrome limitation. Cinematographer Payam Azizi shoots almost every intersecting scene of the screenplay in at least two different angles to show individual perspectives and then Editor Arash Rasafi very intelligently clubs the scenes together to connect the subplots. The background score by Abuzar Saffarian has an amusing appeal to it.
The scene that deserves a special mention is one where a medical college professor is attempting to logically explain his students the reason of death of a corpse from the morgue, while the actual reason of death of the person is absolutely opposite to his logic. Instead of opening in a flashback, the death scene of the victim plays parallel to the professor's lecture, occupying half frame of the screen. The way in which the scene is conceptualized, enacted, edited and shot is hilarious.
This is one film which is smart on story and superlative of story-telling.
by Gaurav.Malani@gmail.com
