Automagic Review | A Heady Nocturnal Encounter Drives Ashok Vish’s Potent Short Film

Many a film finds its maker wrestling with the medium to scan and examine what it’s capable of holding—the expansion of minds and bodies it might stimulate. We wander through films when a sudden moment’s epiphany appears more reflective than anything else in life. Everything then seems more tangible, within the ambit of likelihood than being outright unseen and unfelt. Screening at MAMI Independent, Ashok Vish’s short film, Automagic, is about a tender frisson zapping between strangers, cracking open their hearts in the midst of what they can and cannot do. The androgynous artist Madhu (Rutviq, utterly bewitching) hails an auto. He doesn’t even summon as much as float towards the driver, Ratnakar (Chetan C.s.) The driver is almost paternalistic initially, chiding him for his dressing which, he insists, can issue wrong impressions. Madhu’s feminine mask flusters him. However, Madhu takes these deeply familiar remarks in his stride, boldly playing with him.

A haughtily teasing Madhu nudges at Ratnakar’s boundaries. Ratnakar is observing celibacy for a pilgrimage. With a glint in his eyes, Madhu dares, tugging him if sleeping with men is also forbidden. Rutviq is smouldering—someone you could well believe might disappear into the mist and leave no trace. He infuses Madhu with this subtle edge of unpredictability. Madhu’s sharp gaze and Ratnakar’s tentative, fledgling watchfulness are spun into a complex, throbbing give-and-take. As the latter himself suggests, Madhu knows answers to every question he seeks. He’s testing the waters, drawing out the repressed, the undiscovered. Often it takes rank strangers to beckon you into exploring that which might have been uncrossed otherwise. Madhu arrives as an exquisite invitation, cheeky but almost impossible not to be arrested by. The night is awash with so much to thrill in. Each time Madhu requests Ratnakar to halt, it feels like a bid to stretch the night further, ask for pleasures not hitherto sought out.

Initial flashes of judgement melt into intense curiosity—a current of connection Ratnakar can’t really deny. As much as he projects to stifle it, pangs of desire peep out. Vish drills into the very particular, heavy shifts in the air between the two. They are orbiting possibilities. Madhu provokes, striking both awkwardness and intrigue in the driver. Ratnakar skirts but an irresistible attraction grows and simmers. A delicious tussle forms between lingering thoughts and those he tries to bat away. Between the slightly challenging exchanges, desire coils into being. While being aware of a modest scope, Vish goes peering into pockets of dialogue which uncover whole worlds within. With sneaky flirtation, he pushes his characters to branch out in imagination and interest, one taking after the other. Transgression, especially the kind that seems poised to happen, spikes the contact, or its lack. What’s permissible and taboo for Ratnakar loosens.

Automagic trembles into fleeting sensations, touch that electrifies, intimacy disruptive yet revelatory. A sense of borrowed time on the ride never disappears, yet we feel the breadth of an epic internal journey, the night rolling out for just and only the pair to revel in and chart without apology, fear or restriction. Simultaneously, time and the outside world appear to dissolve for the two. A transcendent moment captures when Madhu sparks and shifts something within Ratnakar. Wissam Hojeij’s music rains lush and ecstatic, the auto a dazzling little fantasy wedged between regular life. This swell of music seems supersized—quiet emotion but shivering with beauty. It transmutes the encounter into something transformative. It’s the kind of scene that mixes the mundane with something gorgeously elevated. The second time Vish rekindles the music, it does feel a tad too sanded in for effect than a natural sweep. However, Nikhil Pires’ camerawork bathes the film in such moody, mysterious and magical reds and neon it stays visually entrancing. The lensing breathes into a powerful, erotically laden sense of intimacy. Automagic is as pulsing and evocative in atmosphere as the turns of a relationship can gesture. Vish works with bare bones of an interaction and rings out all its tension, discomfort and appetite for adventure. Apparently, this short is the starting board for Vish’s debut feature, where this small journey will span out in its many awakenings and implications. As a precursor, Automagic is like a stunned little daze of a film.