A young nun who breaks her vows to indulge herself, a blind man who offers himself to be used in exchange for a quick fling, and a priest who manipulates the trust of others to satisfy his own twisted fantasies. Three people bound by a set of strange circumstances, symbiotic if you so wish to call their relationship, yet so dismissive of the acts of each other, form the main characters of this story. This is the world of Amen, a story of lust, sin, and fetish in a remote farm on the hills. A nervous young nun prepares for her clandestine meeting with her paramour in a dilapidated factory beyond the woods and the tea estates. As she covers the distance from her convent, she is both excited and uneasy. But when she locates him waiting for her at the appointed place, she runs through with the act immediately, racing against the clock. They go through their passionate act, as if acting out a pre-written script which they have instructed to play out. But there are others privy to this clandestine meeting between the nun and her paramour, observing them from a distance.
‘Amen’ is a short film by Director Bodi Rajkumar. Rajkumar tells the story of a young nun, a blind young man, and a young priest who tied together in a rather unholy relationship. Rajkumar sets his story in the remote hills amongst the tea gardens and eucalyptus plantations. The choice of location is a powerful element in the telling of this story of the secret meeting. The powerful camera angles and the impressionable camera angles create a visual style to the story that emphasises the fact that we in fact peering into the private moments of a clandestine meeting. Powerful performances bring out the baser emotions at play, keeping the viewer at the edge of the seat, building up suspense and intrigue for the grand payoff at the end.
‘Amen’ is a powerful short film, both in content and style. The lack of colour in the visuals and the omnipresent dense fog forebodes a story where everything is grey. There is no white or black, no right or wrong and no colours to paint a different version of reality with.
