Author Archives: Heather Wilson

Hellaro

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Despite winning the National Award for Best Feature Film, I hadn’t heard much about this film until it was recommended to me by a friend living in the UK. Luckily Hellaro was also released here in Melbourne, and I was able to watch this Guajarati film on the big screen last week. And what a treat! Hellaro is a beautiful film, steeped in the vibrant colours of Kutch with an amazing soundtrack and excellent performances from all the cast. The story is simple, but powerfully compelling and overall, it’s an absolute joy to experience at the theatre.

The end titles advise that the film is based on folklore and both the telling and the subject matter fit into that style of story. Hellaro is a tale about female oppression and the struggle to overcome patriarchy as the women of a small village in Kutch try to escape their controlling and violent menfolk. The women are kept virtual prisoners by the men, and rarely leave their homes except to collect water from a small lake close to the village. Singing and dancing are banned, along with sewing and anything that might bring joy to the women’s dull and barren existence. New bride Manjhri (Shraddha Dangar) enters into this misery with her soldier husband Arjan (Aarjav Trivedi), who has been allowed home from the border for his wedding. On his wedding night he explains the rules of the village to the educated and city-bred Manjhri and advises her to cut her own wings and horns as it will hurt more if he has to do it himself.

Being educated and from a more liberal family, Manjhri raises questions about the village customs. The only chance she gets to speak to the other women is during their daily trek to the lake, but even then the women are conservative and hesitant to step out of their restrictive roles. On the way to fetch water one morning the women find a man dying in the desert and after initially avoiding any contact, they finally revive him with the water they are carrying home. Manjhri takes the lead in this rescue as many of the women are frightened and want to leave the man to his fate, well aware of the consequences if their husbands find out they have helped a male stranger. Manjhri’s compassion is quickly rewarded as the man they have rescued is a dholak called Mulji (Jayesh More), who is persuaded to play his drum for them, giving the women a chance to escape their day to day reality and experience freedom.

In the village the women hide in their houses as the man dance garba with swords, twirling their moustaches and ironically praying to a female goddess for rain. In the desert the women dance garba to the beats of Mulji’s drum in a brief moment of happiness and release from their suffocating lives in the village. The mix of music and colour is intoxicating and yet violence is never far away with the ever-present threat that the men will find out exactly what the women are doing.

Although the story follows a linear path, there are layers within the basic tale and adding in caste politics and the fate of widows in rural India adds more depth and texture to the plot. In Hellaro, writer/director Abhishek Shah and co-writer Prateek Gupta have taken a simple idea and crafted a vibrant screenplay that’s enhanced by Saumya Joshi’s dialogues. Small details build on each other, crafting a detailed picture of a world that really could be any time or anywhere, adding to the fairy-tale atmosphere of the film. The women are superstitious and some believe that their ‘sin’ of dancing may be the cause of various mishaps around the village, while others are fully aware that the men are the source of all their troubles. Throughout the film, the characters are mostly painted as either black or white, but each of the women have defining traits that round out their characterisations to some extent. While they are still mostly brief sketches, each of the actors shows personality and ensures each character is seen as an individual.

The men are less well defined and are mostly seen as brutal and violent although a couple are shown in a little more depth. Bhaglo (Maulik Nayak) travels routinely between the village and the city and as a result is rather more cosmopolitan in his views. He entertains some of the villagers by re-telling the stories of the movies he has seen, although the men are more interested in the bedroom scene from Bobby than hearing about Basanti dance in Sholay. Bhaglo’s open-mindedness and awareness of the women’s situation is well contrasted with Arjan’s more traditional view, despite both men having travelled outside the boundaries of the village.

As the dholi, Jayesh More has few dialogues, but he is pivotal to the story and is excellent in the climax sequences. Shraddha Dangar is fantastic in the role of Manjhri, but all the women are superb and I wish I knew more about them to be able to differentiate individual performances. Mehul Surti provides the wonderful music while choreographers Sameer and Arsh Tanna spin magic with their brilliant garba routines. Cinematographer Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni captures the harshness of the desert, but also its beauty, along with the fantastic colours of the women’s clothing and the details of the house interiors. The film looks amazing in every frame and it’s this mix of music, colour and performances that make Hellaro such a memorable experience.

The only downside is that this a rather simplistic view of patriarchy with mostly very binary characters. The few who do show more complexity are still mostly good; that is progressive, understanding, empathetic and believers in equality with little or no negative traits. Those who are bad show few redeeming qualities, but in reality most people are rarely quite so black and white and societal divisions are not as clear or as clean as they are in Hellaro. What does feel more contemporary though is the banding together of the women over a common source of happiness, along with the determined but passive way in which they fight back. Their taking a stand feels realistic and plausible, while the overall joy of dance that is so integral to the film is perhaps the one thing that will unite both men and women.

Hellaro really is a beautiful film in terms of the framing of the shots, the music, costumes and choreography. Although the subject matter is often ugly, the exuberance the women show while dancing and the wonderful imagery ensure that this is a film that will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended, especially if you can find it in the cinema.

Enai Noki Paayum Thota (2019)

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Gautham Menon’s latest film Enai Noki Paayum Thota has a number of similarities with his 2016 release, Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada (Sahasam Swasaga Sagipo), but the formula doesn’t work as well this time around.  Dhanush manages to hold the erratic story together, but there is too much that has been seen before for this film to really make an impact. However, the songs are good, the action sequences work well and Dhanush is charming in the romance sequences, making Enai Noki Paayum Thota worth at least a one-time watch.

Raghu (Dhanush) appears to be a fairly typical student from a rather well-to-do family until the day he meets and falls in love with aspiring actress Lekha (Megha Akash). He is immediately smitten (we know because there is a voice-over that tells us so), but the relationship is initially slow to develop, partly because Raghu is rather awed by Lekha, but also because he isn’t totally sure of his own feelings and appears to prefer a more restrained approach. However, once Raghu makes his move, the romance progresses swiftly and Lekha seems equally head over heels in love with Raghu. That does strike a discordant note since there doesn’t seem to be any reason for Lekha to pick Raghu out of all the scrawny students watching the film shoot in their college, particularly since Raghu doesn’t go out of his way to make her notice him. There is no effort to explain her actions either, but then Lekha generally has very little will of her own in this film and ultimately, she isn’t important except as a reason for Raghu to search out his brother and beat up lots of ‘bad guys’. This film is all about Raghu, and Lekha is just the means by which he gets to show off his survival skills.

The romance itself, although beautifully filmed, is also rather less than satisfying. There is some chemistry between Dhanush and Megha in the songs, but that seems to be muted everywhere else, and the love story just isn’t completely convincing. I can buy that Raghu is besotted by Lekha, but Megha Akash doesn’t seem to be able to generate the same amount of emotion or attraction that Dhanush brings to his role. Since we learn early on that Lekha is being abused by her manager Kuberan (Senthil Veerasamy), this does lead to the conclusion that perhaps the relationship is developed by Lekha to get away from a bad situation rather than being a true love match. There are mixed messages from the dialogue too. Raghu says he’s a good man and doesn’t want to take advantage, but that doesn’t stop him from kissing Lekha when the opportunity presents. Then Lekha says she cannot live without him, but leaves when pressured by her manager, and doesn’t contact Raghu at all for years. It all makes it difficult to empathise with either character or even care if they will manage to meet up again.

Adding to the plot is Raghu’s missing brother Thiru (Sasikumar), who left the family many years ago after a tragic accident. Thiru has been AWOL ever since, but when Lekha finally gets back in touch with Raghu, she reveals that she is staying with Thiru and that he is in trouble. Further muddying of the plot happens with Kuberan’s links to various shady underworld deals, and just in case he wasn’t despicable enough, the years have turned him into a wife-beater and potential rapist who wants to exploit Lekha by pimping her out. It’s all just a bit too much, and the emotional blackmail used to coerce Lekha into staying with Kuberan is equally heavy handed and overly filmy.

There are also a large number of coincidences in the film that further dilute the story. Lekha just happens to meet up with Thiru in Mumbai, a crowded city where it can be difficult to meet up with someone even when you’ve arranged a meeting! It seems too good to be true that Lekha stumbles across someone who is actually an undercover cop, and the rationale seems contrived and simply unlikely. Also conveniently, Raghu follows his brothers trail easily despite minimal information and is able to find the evidence he needs right under his nose, although no-one else has been able to figure it out. And then there are a lot of close shaves with bullets (the title is taken quite literally here) that are rather too miraculous to be true as well.  The different ‘modes’ also generated some laughter in the cinema, particularly ‘beast mode’ which seemed to be an excuse to add some action sequences, although these are well choreographed and work well within the overall story. A word too about the subtitles, which were in yellow and easy to read font, but which appeared to be literal translations in parts, which simply didn’t make sense in English. So, some of the issues I had with the story may just have been due to not understanding exactly what was going on.

Enai Noki Paayum Thota Movie Actor Dhanush HD Images

The film released late in Melbourne, and I’d read a couple of comments on social media about the voice-overs by Raghu throughout the film. On watching, these do make a sort of sense since the film is Raghu’s life story and his internal monologue helps clarify his thoughts and motivations. To his credit, Dhanush puts enough emotion into his performance to compensate for the lack of actual dialogue between characters, however the voiceovers also isolate the story to just Raghu’s view of the situation, reducing the rest of the cast to bit players in Raghu’s story. Ultimately this affects the all relationships; between Raghu and his family, his brother Thiru and even his relationship with Lekha, since the main view the audience sees of each is through Raghu’s own thoughts.

The focus of the story is firmly on Raghu, and Dhanush puts in an excellent performance, once again transforming himself into a fresh-faced young student and then appearing as an older and wiser version later in the film. He has the energy and acting talent to make his role believable, despite all the odd coincidences, but his character still doesn’t connect well with the rest of the cast. I don’t think this is just because of the monologues, but seems to be a more fundamental problem with the writing. All the other characters appear only through their connections with Raghu and only rarely interact with anyone else. Sasikumar, who should have been a powerful influence in the film ends up with very little dialogue and the lack of a convincing relationship between Thiru and Raghu makes his parts of the story clunky and awkward. Events mean that their relationship never gets any better either, while Raghu’s parents and sister have less screentime and therefore proportionately even less connection with Raghu.

Megha Akash looks beautiful but seems very constrained and lacklustre, especially when compared to Dhanush. Gautham Menon seems determined to make her a victim here, and perhaps I’ve just had enough of this tired trope, but it was frustrating to watch Lekha continually wait for someone to rescue her. Raghu’s Mumbai-based friend Meera (Sunaina) has more gumption, at least initially, but frustratingly she’s also quickly reduced to a victim with little further part to play in the story.

The entire film revolves around Raghu, but this narrow focus makes it difficult to invest in the story or the characters, and it’s really only Dhanush’s performance that makes any kind of impact. While he is front and centre, the film works reasonably well, but there are too many irritating issues with the other characters to make this a truly engaging film. Worth watching for Darbuka Siva’s songs and Dhanush’s skilled performance, but unfortunately there is little else here to be excited about.

 

Tumbbad

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Horror films are not usually my first, or even second choice, but I’m so glad I listened to a friend’s recommendation and watched Tumbbad. The film is exquisitely made and the story is much better than I expected – more Pan’s Labyrinth than The Shining although quite definitely Indian in feel. Here there are myths, metaphors and monsters that are frightening on a number of levels while the underlying story explores the theme of greed and how it warps and twists those it touches. The story is told in three separate chapters that span the years from 1918 to 1947 and adds glimpses of the social issues of the time, ranging from the harsh treatment of widows to Indian Independence and the opium trade. Against this backdrop, Vinayak Rao grows from a young child to become a father himself as he seeks out the treasure that lies within Tumbbad.

The film opens with an animation and voice-over where a father tells his son the legend of the god Hastar and his imprisonment in the womb of the goddess of prosperity. It’s an effective way to quickly explain the background story and introduce the idea of treasure and the consequences of unrestricted greed before moving to 1918 and a rain-soaked village somewhere near Pune. Tumbbad is where young Vinayak (Dhundiraj Prabhakar Jogalekar) and Sadashiv (Rudra Soni) live with their mother (Jyoti Malshe) in a strange stone house on the top of a hill. The boy’s mother is housekeeper and mistress to the ageing Sarkar (Madhav Hari Joshi) who lives in a crumbling palace and who is apparently also the boys’ father. Vinayak’s mother also takes care of the Sarkar’s great grandmother (Piyush Kaushik), who is chained and locked in a room at the end of a long, narrow corridor in their small house. She sleeps as long as she is fed regularly and the family live in dread of her waking with her snores added to the ever-present sound of the rain.

After Sarkar dies, Vinayak wants to look for the treasure, supposedly located somewhere in the palace, but after a tragic accident his mother is intent on leaving Tumbbad. She forces Vinayak to promise not to return, but fifteen years later Vinayak (Sohum Shah) breaks his vow and returns to the palace to claim his birthright. But as his great, great grandmother tells him, not everything you inherit should be claimed. The final chapter in the story relates what happens when Vinayak brings his own son Pandurang (Mohammad Samad) to Tumbbad and initiates him into the mystery of Hastar and the family treasure.

The film was written by Rahil Anil Barve, along with Anand Gandhi, Mitest Shah and Adesh Prasad, and went through a number of producers and re-writes before finally releasing at film festivals last year. Perhaps as a consequence of the long development, Tumbbad is full of sumptuous detail that mostly serves to enhance the story. To start with, the village of Tumbbad seems practically non-existent since the only places seen through the veil of rain are the crumbling palace and the family’s stone house set amongst a bleak and desolate landscape. Adding to the misery of the landscape, inside the house there are dark passageways lit only by lamplight, while the palace is a bewildering warren of rooms and buildings which are gradually overtaken by trees and greenery as time passes. The whole place reeks of decay and corruption and is the perfect setting for a horror film. Pankaj Kumar is in charge of cinematography and his previous experience with films such as Haider and Ship of Theseus seems to have influenced his almost surreal treatment of the landscape here.

The path to the treasure is via a well and as Vinayak descends the passageway becomes red with oozing walls that seem to pulsate, making it seem as if he has indeed crawled into the womb of the goddess in his search for Hastar. The monsters are well thought out too and with clever use of CGI and dim lighting the effects are frightening without being overly gruesome or theatrical. The film relies on suggestion and atmosphere rather than all-out horror or gore, but there are several excellent jump-scares and plenty of creepy moments that are quite scary enough for me.

Throughout the film there are several reoccurring themes that lock the cycle of greed in place. The rain is constant, while a woman wearing red and the image of a boy covered in flour reoccur in different chapters of the story. Best of all are the wonderfully intricate and complex locks that secure the various entrances – to the stone house, the palace, and even to the entrance to the treasure.

Sohum Shah is fantastic here as a man so obsessed by gold that he values it above all other relationships. His face is cold and emotionless until it comes to the matter of money, and then his infatuation with treasure is plain to see. He even trains Pandurang in the skills needed to reach the treasure, but has no real emotional connection with his son at all. The two child actors in the beginning are superb and are instrumental is setting up the initial claustrophobic fear that permeates their home.

It’s the evolution of the main characters here and how they become monstrous in their greed that works best, which Mohammad Samad manages well as Pandurang. His change from initial innocence to scheming for more gold is beautifully handled and perfectly summed up in his attitude to his mother and to Vinayak’s mistress (Ronjini Chakraborty). It’s an impressive performance from the young actor and he handles the various emotions of the role incredibly well. Anita Date is also good in a small but important role as Vinayak’s wife, while Deepak Damle and the rest of the support cast are all effective and add layers to the complexity of the film.

The most impressive thing about Tumbbad is the story, which grabs attention right from the start and just doesn’t let go. The stunning sets and clever use of light and shade are amazingly effective, while the whole world of the film is resonant with detail and rich in imagination. Despite the story being all about the evil of greed, it doesn’t ever feel moralistic, but rather simply describes the consequence of succumbing to the desire for more and more gold. It’s also an interesting take to have the protagonist approach and take advantage of the monster rather than the other way around. All up, Tumbbad is an excellent directorial début from Rahi Anil Barve and creative director Anand Gandhi. It’s simply an awesome film that deserves a wide audience outside of fans of the horror genre, and is well worth catching online if (like me) you missed it at the cinema. 4½ stars.