What We Carry in Solitude: A Film Review of Alone, Alone, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

Directed by Anvita Gattani. Executive Produced by Sònia Victoria Werner. Produced by Heather Lynn Wong, Anvita Gattani, Shravan Venkatesh, and Sònia Victoria Werner. Written by Kenzie Packer & Shravan Venkatesh. Starring Shravan Venkatesh and Wasim Azeez.

A Lighthouse Ladies production | 15 minutes

A film review by Ana Licollari, Lighthouse Ladies staff member

When a devastating tragedy strikes, an app offers two Indian brothers the option to erase the event from their memories forever.

If you had the ability to erase trauma, would you? A stubbed toe, an embarrassing stumble, a bad breakup? Maybe. What about the death of a family member (and corresponding grief)? Is a life well-lived defined by the degree of pleasure or the absence of pain? Is it the contrast of highs and lows that produce meaning, or is such a tale we tell ourselves to bear life's tribulations? In the South Asian dystopian short film "Alone, Alone, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea", audiences see a society in which a quality life is defined as a smooth one: frictionless, serene, without pain, complication, and ultimately, depth. Pain is the enemy and technocracy the solution.

In this alternate near-future reality, the masses are granted the power to erase painful memories, big or small, with the BREATHE app. "All it takes is one tap, and BREATHE will rewire your neural pathways, erasing all of your painful memories. Erase your trauma. Control your suffering. Life is too short to worry," the uncanny-valley BREATHE spokeswoman (played by Sònia Victoria Werner) recites, almost as if by rote. Trauma is excisable anywhere and anytime, and we see the consequences in the protagonists Shiva (played by Shravan Venkatesh) and his older brother Rajesh (played by Wasim Azeez), the former of whom indulges in this power and the latter who remains skeptical.

What could so easily become a derivative take on the dangers of ostensible utopias is far more nuanced and philosophical. The brother-duo at the emotional center of the story provides an excellent counterpoint to the merits and drawbacks of erasing pain. Importantly, the story does not gloss over the merits. Audiences are tantalized with the gilded idea of erasing trauma. A caretaker erases the agony of informing yet another grieving family of a life coming to an end. A bad morning full of unfortunate 'breaking news' blasting from the television screen is wiped out. The desire to eliminate pain doesn't discriminate. One begins to wonder whether the importance of contrast between highs and lows is merely mythos, or deception.

It is this reasoning that culminates in a devastating finale, one in which we finally see the weight of a collective wiping—when everyone opts into erasure. When everyone is seduced into forgetting, what happens to accountability, justice, or reality? Anvita Gattani's "Alone, Alone, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea", in 15 incisive minutes, illustrates how "innocent" individual actions devolve into collective cowardice. In the end, perhaps a life well-lived would include less pain, but a well-functioning society necessitates seizing reality with a firm grip, looking at humanity's worst elements—grief, horror, prevarication—straight in the eye.

In conversation with the film's executive producer, Sònia Victoria Werner, the visual thinking behind that argument comes into focus.

"The film is stunning," Werner says, speaking of Director of Photography Kyle Farscht's work. "We have gorgeous exteriors that paint a New York City that's in the near future, where it's still hustling and bustling... but emptier than you'd imagine the city to be. Here, society looks and feels somewhat numb. There's an ease to erasure, and a stark contrast between the very technical greens and blues, and the human warmth from the warmer reds, yellows, and golds, oftentimes emulated in a more 'manufactured' way when characters use the BREATHE app."

She credits colorist Sawyer Gaunt for carrying that care into the grade: "Sawyer did beautiful work with the coloring and bringing those contrasts to life." Referring to Marlon De Silva's editing, complemented by Heather Lynn Wong's polish on the cutting room floor, she adds, "We had an incredible editing team—the editing process took months to perfect, including reshoots interwoven into the final cut to make the central familial conflicts clearer."

That craft is in service of something more specific than a color scheme. "It comes when Rajesh is visiting his brother from India," Werner continues. "Shiva's been living in the United States for many, many years, assimilating into a more "Americanized" way of life. One of my favorite Easter eggs is that shot of Shiva wearing shoes indoors when he beckons Rajesh inside, which, for immigrant families much like my own, is sacrilegious." She goes on, "From the first moment viewers meet Rajesh, we hear a different language for the first time. Visiting his mother and brother after holding down the fort in India is big... there's a sense that much time has passed since they last spoke."

She points to a later restaurant scene as one of the clearest statements of the film's theme. "We see so much care and intentionality in the way that, in the restaurant, everyone is eating somewhat alone," Werner says. "Even if they have other people at the table, everyone's kind of on their phones scrolling. No one's having a conversation except for Shiva and Rajesh... and when things go poorly, the impulse is to do what everyone around them is doing: erase. There are a lot of smiles throughout the film, but no one really knows what it is that they're smiling about."

Werner traces a lot of the film's DNA back to its creator Shravan Venkatesh and director Anvita Gattani. "Anvita so beautifully details her inspirations behind the creation of this work," she says. "In New York, if we're experiencing a train delay, no matter if it's a minor track malfunction or an unfortunate loss, we hear the same collective groan followed by a collective means of escape as heads tilt back down to their phones."

"What would actually happen if we sat with that," Werner asks, "We just need to take a moment to be there for one another, to engage, and not lose ourselves in the monotony."

The title itself carries its own history. She clued me into the fact that "Alone, Alone, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea" was inspired by an acting exercise of Shravan's. Stemming from a poem called 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' the title encompasses this powerful alliteration and assonance that mimics the endless, echoing emptiness of the ocean, and a profound isolation.

"In a world where everyone is forgetting, in this wide, wide sea, what does it mean to be seen, to be in community, in family, to not be alone?" she asks. "In the actual poem, the mariner is surrounded by the dead bodies of his crew and slimy sea creatures, completely cut off from human sympathy and divine grace. We see that same isolation in one of the film's final shots, which I won't give away, but it's the feeling of being surrounded by people and still completely alone. That's what this film aims to capture."

Watch the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubK88s_qEg4

🏆 FILM FESTIVALS & AWARDS:

Oscar®-Qualifying Tasveer Film Festival

Oscar®-Qualifying Flickers Rhode Island Film Festival (Semi Finalist)

Croatian International Film Festival (Best International Short Film Nominee)

NYCIFIF (Winner, Best Short Film)

Chicago South Asian Film Festival

International South Asian Film Festival (ISAFF)

UnScene Festival (Official Selection and Screening of Top 3 Films)

VIIA NY Shorts Showcase Screening

Official Selection: Minorities in Films | Screenings at Angelika Theater NY & American Cinematheque LA, Atlanta

A Colored Lens Screening

Diva Summit Screening

Festival of Cinema NYC Finale Film

Alone Alone Film Review | Alone, Alone, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea