Short Film Review

‘Juice’, an act of resistance against misogyny

Let me take a hard, strong, soft, wide, deep, dense, coarse and heavy as if eyelids were raising defying gravity look at you

Any movie hasn’t influenced me let alone a short film more than a scene I would like you to see, visualize and reflect on. What does a gaze mean to you? What does a stare mean to you? What do lust-filled eyes mean to you?

Eyes reflect our portrait appearing in the brain’s stimulation that results in animation. Living beings are animated, they move, crawl, sleep, and jump and their movement makes them the virile definition of agility on Earth. But some people lurk, stare, look or gaze, even peek with their eyes but they say a thousand words with a stare. They say immense with a stable confronting look waiting to let their eye sockets turn red and let the water drip off of their eyeballs and still continue the act, as they are not merely looking but living, breathing, dissenting, opining with their nocturnal eyes.

The value of a person’s stare can be gauged from the short film Juice where the power of stare is shown to be a strengthening asset amidst the nerve-wracking acts going around.

What does a stare mean?

Let me take a hard, stern look at you, you are designed differently with no heart, soul or body. I feel sorry for my inner desolate, notorious being for believing in certain things about us that could happen, will happen or maybe would never happen. Let me watch you with my naked eyes your shameless tactics to steal my thunder, wind and storms by that rough hand of yours.

I am powerless, I am weak, and a meek deceived victim, I am wallowing in pain and self-pity. For the moments I was wronged, for the moments I lost the ability to be a human with wants, I am not a baby-producing machine, the agile fractions of your world is non-mobile in mine, you slander my heart, losing its ability to remain pure.

Are you sure? that the cutloose barbing wires of tradition will move beyond me and I would give in. Never! Nope! No! Let my finesse, dignity, opulence shine a bright light on your personality-sucking black wormhole like a hyperbole that travels in speed and baits on women of every age. It's my strength.

I am a weaker sex, for the brawl is never an option, let the juxtaposition do the talking, and sight solves the verbal fight. As, I am having an inkling, afraid of dying because of no self-esteem, harmed by the misogyny of today perpetrated by the domestic violence of yesterday and rapes of the future. For the torture is forever the silent preacher of a fixated worldview, having it become a verse of coercing stability in every walk of life.

Cosmic Context: The short film Juice and one of its scenes had a profound influence on me. The female protagonist had enough of her husband's demands of doing household chores and taking care of their kids while he sits and laughs with his friends who are invited over for food, and he orders his wife to hand him snacks and also take care of the kids. She is roasting herself in heat but he is so self-centred that he cannot even stand on his own two feet to add water to the Water Cooler. In a blip of a second, she lost her calm, she took a few seconds while her chicken was dried and stuck in the frying vessel. She noticed many disparities happening in her space. Seeing the misogyny, patriarchy, classism and women discriminating against other women, even their daughters; she lost her calm.

She took a breather, opened her fridge, took a glass of juice, dragged a chair and proceeded to the entry point of the other room where the men were enjoying a chat, waiting for some time there and then slamming their voices down with her act of sitting on the chair right opposite to water cooler. She bends sideways and closes her eyes as her sweating body feels the drying wind. Then she has a sip of her juice and stares at her husband. The stare was such a moving act as if it was the opposition of a brave kind, a message of stopping the injustices in that house on that particular day. The gaze penetrated the men of the room and all the giggles and discussion on politics and casual misogyny were torn into many shreds and pieces by a woman who did this simple act.

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