THE ECHOES AND INVERSIONS: NARRATIVE MIRRORING AND SEMIOTIC INVERSION IN SAPTA SAGARADAACHE ELLO (SIDE A AND B)

Abstract

The Proposed study analyses both films Sapta Sagaradaache Ello (Side A, Side B, 2023), directed by Hemanth M. Rao, examining them as one semiotic system rather than a sequel. Through film semiotics, narrative theory and spatial symbolism, the Analysis of how the construction of meaning is created across both films is determined. This study will utilise qualitative content analysis through close readings of selected scenes, visual motifs that recur throughout the films, and the use of domestic settings to demonstrate how the signs on Side A that represent aspiration and emotional expansiveness are systematically reversed on Side B through small and confining physical environments, degrading places. The findings indicate that the two-part structure of film is not only an extension of narrative but serves as an initial structural condition required to create meanings where the desires established by Side A are retrospectively reframed as Side B by way of temporal destruction, repetitions and negations. As the objects that recur in both films gain additional layers of semiotic meaning, they serve as containers of emotional surplus across both films. The climactic parallelisms of the two films restrict achieving integrative narrative closure, favouring incompleteness and consequence rather than resolution. This research contributes to the field of contemporary Indian cinema through an examination of how the use of multi-part narratives can function as relational semiotic systems that communicate complex emotional realities through their formal structural compositions, rather than by way of written expository dialogue.