The hole in the wall: how the film ‘27 steps of may’ portrays stages of grief and acceptance

27 Steps of May is an Indonesian film directed by Ravi Bharwani that centers around the life of May and her father. Throughout this 112-minute film, the two of them continue to repeat the same routine for eight years following May’s traumatic experience as a sexual assault survivor. This film is important to be analyzed because it highlights a marginalized issue of sexual assault. This study aims to uncover the visual narrative of the film to see how the film 27 Steps of May portrays grief and acceptance in living as a sexual assault survivor. Using visual methodologies with Peircean semiotics approach, this study will analyze whether the film further popularized the Kübler-Ross model of grieving stages or tried to present another perspective through its dominant visual images. The result shows that the film portrays different stages of grief by focusing on the process of grieving for May using the medium in the form of the hole in the wall. This finding shows that the film took a different approach by breaking through the popular model known as the five stages of grief. This study implies that there is a need to redefine the stages of grief so that personal emotions and actions experienced in grieving can be accommodated.

《27步的五月》（27 Steps of May）是印度尼西亚导演拉维·巴瓦尼（Ravi Bharwani）执导的影片，以主角梅与其父亲的生活为核心叙事。这部片长112分钟的作品，讲述了在梅作为性侵幸存者遭遇创伤后的八年里，二人始终重复着一成不变的日常。该片之所以值得深入分析，在于其聚焦了性侵这一边缘化社会议题。本研究旨在挖掘该影片的视觉叙事手法，探析《27步的五月》如何刻画性侵幸存者在创伤后所经历的哀伤与接纳过程。本研究采用皮尔斯符号学（Peircean semiotics）视角下的视觉研究方法，将分析该片是进一步普及了库伯勒-罗斯（Kübler-Ross）哀伤五阶段模型，还是通过主导性视觉意象呈现了别样的解读视角。研究结果表明，影片以墙洞作为视觉媒介，聚焦梅的哀伤疗愈过程，呈现了不同阶段的哀伤情绪。本研究发现，该片打破了广为人知的五阶段哀伤模型，采用了截然不同的创作路径。本研究亦暗含了重新界定哀伤阶段的必要性，唯有如此，方能涵盖创伤疗愈过程中个体的真实情感与行为表现。