Ambitious Beginnings
The movie starts with the Iconic skyline of Singapore, Marina Bay. the psychology of the start tells us a lot more than is visible on the surface water from the Marina Bay Hotels Bridge. From the lookouts, the scene gets quite an ambitious plot, where our female protagonist is shooting as a camerawoman. On the director’s part, it was quite a clever way of putting the girl in a normal category. It was the actor’s first break in Bollywood. She shoots the said heroine on set, giving ideas to the director about the shoot, while she gets poked by a male producer who objectively eyes her, disregarding her talent and limiting her to beauty standards.
Color of Life
While the choice of the first scene gives away a lot more about the movie’s plot and architectural styles, we are yet to witness ahead. Shooting in the city of Singapore, and choosing a manmade iconic vision, shows how the challenges and the architectural style are crafted by humans for themselves.
The scene then takes us inside a vibrantly lit mall of Marina Bay, where the large glass facade of Bay Hotels is the heroine’s backdrop while she shares a drink with the producer trying to persuade the person in front of her to collaborate professionally on an ambitious project, but keeps her walls high as he leaves accompanies her to flight and then at her doorstep of her humble building, echoing art deco with curved balconies and slender railings. But she has zero difficulty telling him no when he tries to sit within her after-work boundaries.
Just like our protagonist’s character, her home is a limitless, large, experimental studio apartment. Just how her main door, a flat number nameplate, is crafted, resembles the experiments of the art deco style that landed from the dreamy land of Paris to Bombay in the 1930s which then later expanded to the city by city. Housing a lot of traditional style furniture resembling her maternal grandparents home. As we move inside her apartment, she intentionally tips things over, that her ideal elder sister, like a maid, tidied over. Both of these women are doing their work aptly, but trying to please people meanwhile, a trait of youth, of architecture, and people, catching onto the train of ambition and soulfulness.
Although in the city of Mumbai, she has crafted her spacious universe with seemingly no walls, showing her limitless and expansive future, with grasscloth in a rustic golden shade, depicting how she was trying to find shine in the manmade, and moodlightings rather than the actual sun or outside air. Bookshelf from today’s modern square style constructed with speed and with ease, accentuated the speedy messes and functionality of her life.
Her apartment had a large window where only a few were open. Unnatural but mood lighting lit her night in orange and pink, showing the sensuality with which people see her beauty while the overpowering orange-yellow shows her hunger for carving her world of creative masterpieces.
The style is roughly bohemian, which mixes darker shades of brown and grey with crafty unique pieces like brass auto pieces and unique showcases, lights, and handcrafted works in an industrial-style home. She has to leave all of this behind to leave for Goa, her hometown, which she sadly says goodbye to for single women who are still figuring out their life, career, and partnership goals, restricting their entry.
For some reason, this information is delivered to her, while she barely pays heed to such things, but still only gets to her, once she picks up her landlord whom she barely knows. Just as she receives knowledge of the producer who got engaged to his ex, for whose advances she left a husband material guy who owned a lavish rich Venusian decor restaurant. But it simply depicts just how kids wearing shorts are denied to celebrate birthday parties in his restaurants only welcome when our female protagonists convince this man of it, before breaking off their relationship with him. Only showing how he didn’t match up to her freestyle of being and inner child’s explorations. She had yet to explore.
Changing Style anticipation of future
We are then shown a hint of a rooftop cafe crafted in Venusian style mixed with unique iron-white painted chairs, a hint of where she will be going next. Her parents’ house.
Her parents’ living room, housed, different kinds of sitting chairs and sofas, just like her own apartment, showing experimentalism, but here it was pastel and more classy looking with velvet covers and brightly lit space, the only way their chairs were different was by its structural shape, while the pastel fabric and velvet touch united them all.
The windows translucently lit, hinted at a pool showing their wealth, while our protagonist sat on a traditional-looking chair, with a cane crisscross, a style quite prevalent today. This shows how she is ahead in a sense of fashion and style instinctively and creatively, as she finds comfort in the richness of the art and culture of her place inspired by her.
Her bedroom is intimate but looks rather dull and less crafted, like her childhood betrayal that stunted her creativity and expression then. Meanwhile, it overlooked a rich balcony with an inbuilt sofa along the peripheral edge, as the plant hung, suggesting how now it was just the right place for her to find comfort in her season of life, as the sun brightened the space as her friend or sister was doing yoga beside her.
Her friends were the main center of her support, like the world she was trying to craft for herself trying to find support in what wasn’t yet birthed, instead of finding healing in her present.
Sometimes we close doors not because they won’t open, but because we are afraid of what will happen we open them again.
Adding light to color
Colorful planters drop bright green creepers on the edge of the balcony wall running, at the headrest of the inbuilt sofa. The father of the girl proposes and extends her a simple work proposal to shoot his friend’s restaurant, where she overhears the male lead, leading an interesting conversation about navigating life’s challenges.
We see her next in the office, where there are plenty of chairs and other sitting options. But the room is bright, although the grasscloth finish is there on one of his walls, similar to her apartment. But the room is brightly lit, circular window in the backdrop showing the full circle moment of wholeness people our protagonists find in this meeting while cherishing his hand-crafted works and experiments in bright daylight.
His home is in a neoclassical style of architecture, mixed with Kerala or tropical style of home, surrounded by trees in solace, he displayed his stage work to entertain a very intimate audience of his own who came to visit his place. Everything was unique and warm in his decor. His bookshelf was of dark brown wood finish, taking you to the memory of libraries found in England, with a fair touch of England aesthetics as compared to her bookshelf showing how she was meeting the right people, who had few things figured, which she needed some guidance in.
Conclusion
From then on we see her meeting in more scenic beauty in her hometown, going cycling in lanes with traditional periphery of lime plastered boundary walls distinctly away from the homes, with decorative paintings of red color made of mud of Goan architecture, and beaches.
Transitioning from limitless studio apartments to the ever-changing bounds of different homes, the protagonist moves past her old self, opening horizons to encounters with like-minded and more enlightened company. She finds creative satiation in her small, unique creations, prioritizing her fulfillment over proving her worth to others. She hosts a small gathering featuring her creations.
Citation:
Contents, W. (2021) Chronicling Art Deco – India version, World Architecture Community. Available at: https://worldarchitecture.org/article-links/evpmz/chronicling-art-deco–india-version.html (Accessed: 02 January 2024).
Unacademy (2022) Architecture in Bombay, Unacademy. Available at: https://unacademy.com/content/upsc/study-material/ncert-notes/architecture-in-bombay/ (Accessed: 02 January 2024).
Leonardo, (2016). Marina Bay of Sand Skyline. [Photograph]. (Pixabay) (2016). Movie Dear Zindagi. [Photograph].
