Last Friday, my friend Gayatri took me to Fun Republic in Mumbai to watch a screening of Bejoy Nambiar’s 40-minute film Rahu.
Gayatri was a contestant in the Sony Pix reality show Gateway that won Bejoy an internship and a chance to direct a film in Hollywood. I’m not the biggest fan of reality shows and watched Gateway only for Gayatri whose emotion-inspired short films were refreshingly different from the ‘clever’ oeuvres that other contestants (all male) experimented with. Everyone tried to be clever but Bejoy carried it off with élan! His winning short film – Soap – which starred Jackie Shroff and Raj Zutshi was a slick story about a man whose real life is bizarrely taken over by a television soap. Unlike most newbies, his work had an incredible ‘finish’ and great attention to detail.
Which is why I went along willingly to see RAHU – a project he’d shot before Gateway happened. (Else you have to drag me screaming and protesting to short film fest, arty screenings etc). The poster of the film – Rahu – showed the silhouette of a women cradling a baby against a shadowy background suggesting eclipses and buried secrets. Yikes. Some soddy tale of tragic motherhood with ghoulish overtones? Hasn't Night Shyamalam inflicted enough upon us?
The first fifteen minutes of Rahu were incoherent. Filmed in rural Kerela, it’s shot in a relaxed, luxurious manner befitting its lush rain-drenched canvas. Some shots are almost like exquisite paintings. And yet, a beautiful film is not always a good film. It took a good while to get a grip as the film broke into whimsical tangents. Rahu tells the stories of a motley bunch of protagonists whose lives are woven together in a thread of tragic circumstances under the inauspicious gaze of one of the most destructive and inauspicious planets – Rahu. A doomed couple in love, an old man aching to reunite with his estranged daughter, two children mourning the loss of a chicken (superb casting!), and a helpless family man caught in economic crises that fuel bizarre ancestral religious rituals (another finely etched performance from Sandip Kulkarni, who I thought a study in restraint in Dombivli Fast)
The stories are told in a stubbornly non-chonological fashion, using flashbacks almost oppressively. This is no party! It seems the filmmaker insists that the viewer use his brains to weave together the base cloth to a finely patchworked quilt he’s …er…patching.
I go numb at ‘clever’ films, the ones that throb with cerebral tension. I also go numb at handkerchief-oriented films that make you cry so much you crave a breath of air!
It’s very difficult to portray tragedy without lapsing into melodrama or compensating with unnecessary celebral overload. For the large part, Rahu managed to straddle both extremes, without losing its intensity.
I felt for the protagonists and the invisible hand of fate that was wringing their lives. But I wasn’t buried under their tragedies. I was allowed to be the stunned and sympathizing bystander. I could use both my brain and my heart.
Gayatri was a contestant in the Sony Pix reality show Gateway that won Bejoy an internship and a chance to direct a film in Hollywood. I’m not the biggest fan of reality shows and watched Gateway only for Gayatri whose emotion-inspired short films were refreshingly different from the ‘clever’ oeuvres that other contestants (all male) experimented with. Everyone tried to be clever but Bejoy carried it off with élan! His winning short film – Soap – which starred Jackie Shroff and Raj Zutshi was a slick story about a man whose real life is bizarrely taken over by a television soap. Unlike most newbies, his work had an incredible ‘finish’ and great attention to detail.
Which is why I went along willingly to see RAHU – a project he’d shot before Gateway happened. (Else you have to drag me screaming and protesting to short film fest, arty screenings etc). The poster of the film – Rahu – showed the silhouette of a women cradling a baby against a shadowy background suggesting eclipses and buried secrets. Yikes. Some soddy tale of tragic motherhood with ghoulish overtones? Hasn't Night Shyamalam inflicted enough upon us?
The first fifteen minutes of Rahu were incoherent. Filmed in rural Kerela, it’s shot in a relaxed, luxurious manner befitting its lush rain-drenched canvas. Some shots are almost like exquisite paintings. And yet, a beautiful film is not always a good film. It took a good while to get a grip as the film broke into whimsical tangents. Rahu tells the stories of a motley bunch of protagonists whose lives are woven together in a thread of tragic circumstances under the inauspicious gaze of one of the most destructive and inauspicious planets – Rahu. A doomed couple in love, an old man aching to reunite with his estranged daughter, two children mourning the loss of a chicken (superb casting!), and a helpless family man caught in economic crises that fuel bizarre ancestral religious rituals (another finely etched performance from Sandip Kulkarni, who I thought a study in restraint in Dombivli Fast)
The stories are told in a stubbornly non-chonological fashion, using flashbacks almost oppressively. This is no party! It seems the filmmaker insists that the viewer use his brains to weave together the base cloth to a finely patchworked quilt he’s …er…patching.
I go numb at ‘clever’ films, the ones that throb with cerebral tension. I also go numb at handkerchief-oriented films that make you cry so much you crave a breath of air!
It’s very difficult to portray tragedy without lapsing into melodrama or compensating with unnecessary celebral overload. For the large part, Rahu managed to straddle both extremes, without losing its intensity.
I felt for the protagonists and the invisible hand of fate that was wringing their lives. But I wasn’t buried under their tragedies. I was allowed to be the stunned and sympathizing bystander. I could use both my brain and my heart.
Music by Prashant-Krishnan is refreshingly good. The Sufi-inspired track Betabi which burst in towards the middle of the film did jar a bit with the minimal, all-Malayali dialogues, but was eventually rather hummable.
I came out of the tiny auditorium, not blown away by cinematic brilliance but moved and shaken by a simple slice of complicated lives, intelligently told.
Rahu, I would like to believe is new-age India, which doesn’t seek to titillate or shock you with its starkness (which is what I suspect parallel cinema of the 70’s was up to). It may seem a bit excessive at times, but it certainly doesn’t make a mockery of situations that require responsible handling (religious politics, relationships, fate).
I came out of the tiny auditorium, not blown away by cinematic brilliance but moved and shaken by a simple slice of complicated lives, intelligently told.
Rahu, I would like to believe is new-age India, which doesn’t seek to titillate or shock you with its starkness (which is what I suspect parallel cinema of the 70’s was up to). It may seem a bit excessive at times, but it certainly doesn’t make a mockery of situations that require responsible handling (religious politics, relationships, fate).
One rarely gets to see the real India in films without being repulsed by its intensity or overwhelmed by its beauty. I’m no world cinema afficiando (and an unabashed Bollywood fan) but this was good stuff. Rahu is real, beautiful, intelligent and intense.
Most important for a festival ‘type’ – it doesn’t (secretly) bore you to death :-)
Good work Bejoy. Look forward to more style and substance from you.
Good work Bejoy. Look forward to more style and substance from you.
1 comment:
hmmm...
seems ur a movie buff too..
Nice review of rahu, gonna chk out d same
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