Indian Doormat in Paddington
The Frontline Club, located on Norfolk Place, a stone’s throw away from Paddington station, is the place to go for a short fix of anywhere but here.
The second floor of this tastefully decorated building contains a room where images like the shell-shocked subject of Don McCullin’s War Photographer stare out from the wooden walls, inviting you into their distant worlds. It is in this room that talks are given and films like Christy Garland’s Doormat are shown to appreciative audiences.
The thinking behind Doormat is that whoever you are, wherever you are in the world, there are certain soul-searching questions likes ‘am I fulfilling my potential?’ and ‘am I where I want to be?’ that will burrow into your life like a meaning-seeking maggot. Prompted by a Canadian film-making duo, five inhabitants of the doormat-making, south Indian town of Kerala leap candidly into the deep end of self-reflection; the resulting kaleidoscope view, which could have been grimace-inducingly pretentious, is laden with soul, humility and tenacity in the face of disappointment.
The 53-minute documentary directed and produced by Christy Garland and Susan Armstrong, was created using the filmic equivalent of free word association. They decided that they wanted to use a low-key object to link the stories of different individuals. Doormats are low-key. 85% of doormats are made in Kerala…we’re off
Lady Luck must have a soft spot for fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants film makers because she could not have dealt the spontaneous pair a more beautiful and languid landscape than Kerala. The camera makes slow love to rich greens, earthy hues and dream-like sunshine. At one point a spider is followed as it scuttles across parched twigs and rather than irritably muttering ‘get that creepy crawly off my screen’ I feel a lump in my throat. I’m not on my period; it’s simply that, by this point in the film, a slower pace of life is what you want and watching scuttling spiders in the burning hot sun makes all kind of sense.
An interesting addition to this unusual film is a deft piece of animation in the form of a piece of string that coils playfully in and out of scenes. The string represents destiny tying into what is said by Girish, a factory worker with a flair for Victorian era English: ‘there is a line above my head. My aim is to haul myself closer to my dreams. No one can erase or destroy the line above my head.’ This belief in destiny is what lends the people in Doormat a grace you don’t get in grasping, faithless Westerners.
The skill of Doormat is in not using a single moment of footage that is not either beautiful or meaningful. A good way of assessing the quality of art is how it leaves you feeling and for a week after watching Doormat, even now, I am profoundly touched. It is so simple and so raw and surely, beneath the civilisation and sophistication, that’s the story of everyone.
The Frontline Club
13 Norfolk Place
Paddington
W2 1QJ
Tel: 020 7479 8950
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