You are in a restaurant and you want to order something different than the usual. But, you don’t know what exactly you want to eat- In such a scenario ‘Axone‘ is the dish for you!
When you watch the movie Axone, you realize that this is a ‘different’ kind of movie that you always wanted to watch after watching a series of movies by ‘Heroes’ & ‘Actors’. It’s just that you never thought it would be about a bunch of people from Northeast India making a ‘smelly’ dish.
Nicholas Kharkongar‘s movie Axone is about a group of friends Upasana (Sayani Gupta), Chanbi (Lin Laishram), and Zorem (Tenzin Dalha) from Northeast living in Delhi who want to cook a Naga Pork dish with Axone to surprise their friend on her special day. Axone is a commonly used fermented ingredient in Nagaland. It has a very strong smell.
In simple words the movie serves the issue of racism in a satirical platter. The adventurous struggle that they had to go through just to cook a traditional dish, well aligns with the difficulties that people from the Northeast are facing outside the region on a daily basis.
One of the best features of the movie is that it didn’t show a partial side. It also portrayed that somewhere people from Northeast too, have issues in considering themselves more as Indian.
In one of the scenes, Bendang pushes Shiv, a Dilli wala, yelling “You f*cking Indian!”. To this Shiv replies “Tum log apne aap ko Indians nahi samajhte kya?”
Shiv’s character (played by Rohan Joshi) in the movie is like an epiphany that not all people outside Northeast are racists. Throughout the movie he stood up for his NE friends. In spite of being lashed out by his girlfriend and family. Watch out for Shiv to tickle your funny bones.
Through the character of Bendang (Lanuakam Ao) as well as Chanbi (Lin Liashram), the director attempted to show the impact and trauma faced by the people of Northeast in ‘mainland’ India.
Sayani Gupta delivered quite a convincing performance as a Nepali girl. In spite of not being from Northeast, Gupta’s acting as well the accent fit in quite well with other Northeastern characters. Northeastern actors played the other roles.
The most disappointing aspect of the movie Axone is the scanty screen time that it gave to two phenomenal actors . You do get to see Vinay Pathak for some time, but Adil Hussain was not given even a single dialogue. As you watch the movie you feel like the character of Adil Hussain has a purpose which will be unfolded later. He does appear for a couple of times throughout the movie. Unfortunately, those were too short.
Overall, just like the dish, the movie Axone is something that we all should try at least once.
So ladies and gentlemen, log into your Netflix account ASAP and have a taste of Northeast India !
