Taxila, directed by Sathish Ramakrishnan, is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film set on a distant planet in the aftermath of Earth’s destruction. The narrative is an overarching tale that includes the themes of faith, rebellion, and the resilience of indigenous culture. Against a backdrop of utopian science fiction, the film explores how remnants of humanity attempt to rebuild meaning and identity in an unfamiliar world. In its aim to have a layered storytelling, with a crew that is used in independe Taxila hits a couple of right points, but makes a lot of mistakes as the story unfolds.
Director: Sathish Ramakrishnan
Cast: Sathish Ramakrishnan, SS Raman, Alagamuthu, Jaishree
The ambition of the film is to be appreciated. In this day and age the urge to tell a story and be expressive through the cinematic medium is a thirst that most people want to be quenched. Sathish Ramakrishnan, dons multiple hats in this pursuit. But sometimes the brunt of too many dishes but less hands is evident. The writing is primarily hit by this, because in order to make the movie understandable, everything became exposition, and no other literary device was used. The film opens with an explanation about chaos theory and quantum entanglement, through a voice-over, but just when you think the dialogues will kick in, you will be let down.
While it takes a long time for the dialogues to set in and the plot to move forward, once it does, you are waiting for the dramatics to begin. The writing unfortunately fails in this regard, as the descriptive nature of the dialogue takes you away from the film. When some characters are plotting for the overthrowing their oppressors, one would expect that moment to delve into the deeper motivations of characters. But the result is a superficial set of dialogues that doesn’t pay off the intrigue very much.
Even with the music of the film, this error is retained. Music plays a large part in Taxila’s narrative as every moment that does not have dialogue, has music in it. One of Sathish’s many hats in the film is of the music composer. But instead of using music to tell a story, he tells the story with music as one of the tools. This leads to exposition-like lyrics that tells you exactly what you need to understand, reactionary music that comes after the fact of a scene, all of which leads to having no takeaways for the film.
While these are all present, it is the continuous use of artificial intelligence generated imagery that leads to bigger questions. In order to present visuals of science fiction that you have seen in big western productions, this small independent crew resorts to AI. While the ethical nature of using AI is a different argument, within the film, it accomplishes its purpose, but takes viewer away from the watching experience at time.
Overall, Taxila is a bold and ambitious attempt to transport audience into a rich and imaginative world. While in its ambition it traps the plot in a bog, the intrigue is nevertheless remains.
