Raudra [dir. Ravindra Shivaji]

Raudra (roughly translating as scary or horrible), which I stumbled upon on Amazon Prime, seems to have been birthed by the success of the Marathi culture inspired Tumbbad. While that film was a near masterpiece of modern Indian mystery-horror, presenting a fantastic fable of human greed with incredible visual and textural detail, Raudra sadly does not match up.

It is not made explicit, but the story seems to be set sometime in post-independence India (possible the 60's or 70's) in a remote Maharashtrian village. Trambak (Rahul Patil) enters the village as a census taker and arrangements are made for his accommodation at the crumbling vada (mansion) owned by the acerbic Nanasaheb (Deepak Damle). Nanasaheb is a dominating figure both at home to his wife and daughter, and for the villagers. Daughter Mrunmayee (Urmila Jagtap) is young and pretty, and sick of her father's oppression. She seems to find in Trambak a sympathetic ear for her complaints, perhaps even an escape route from her current existence.

Apart from going about his census task in the most halfhearted manner accompanied by buffoonish local aide Bando (Anil Padvankar), Trambak seems quite interested in the regional legends, and it becomes apparent early on that this is not mere idle curiosity. He is in quest of an old temple he claims to be of a family deity. Mrunmayee posits that the information he seeks may be available in an ancient book of records carefully guarded by her father, and volunteers to steal the book for him. Even after stealing the book, they have to contend with solving the riddles contained in it to decode the location of the temple, which is said to house an ancient treasure.

While promising in outline, Raudra disappoints hugely in execution. Writer-Director Ravindra Shivaji's screenplay is lackluster and contains glaring exposition lapses. The MacGuffin of Nanasaheb's book is a clumsy one - given his innate craftiness, it seems unlikely that for so many years before Trambak's arrival he would not have made similar deductions. Worse, the film is unable to set and sustain a pace. Instead of a carefully constructed ebb and flow as Trambak follows up various clues, we get a jerky stop-start narrative.  Characters are drawn with far too few shades to render them interesting. Mrunmayee could have been an layered personality, but as portrayed here (both by the writing and Jagtap's unskilled performance) is rather shallow.

Technically also, Raudra is a mixed bag. The decaying vada is an apt setting  and there are some atmospheric shots (Swapnil Kedare). But several other parts of the film appear prosaic and the music - both songs and BGM - overbearing. Apart from a nicely intimidating Deepak Damle, the cast is not particularly impressive. The film is just not able to sustain a specific mood, essential for this kind of story. The worst is saved for the climax. I really don't know what they were thinking here. Perhaps they wanted to make an impact with its abruptness, but it feels as though they stopped there on account of a total deficiency of ideas on how to finish off the story.

Looking up the entry for this film on IMDB, I find a very favorable rating and almost uniformly gushy user reviews (LINK), but my own experience left me quite cold.

Bali [dir. Vishal Furia]

Bali (Sacrifice) is the follow-up to director Vishal Furia's previous Marathi horror film Lapachhapi (Hide & Seek) [reviewed on this blog HERE]. Vishal's formula, if one may call it that for a 2-feature old maker (his third and most recent release Chhorii is a Hindi language remake of Lapachhapi), is to mix the chills with an underlying social message. Going into the specific details would be giving spoilers for those that have not seen them, so I will as much as possible refrain from doing so. What I liked most about Lapachhapi was its great location and atmosphere - Vishal has a real knack for identifying the inherent spookiness of an isolated / abandoned place and using simple but evocative visual framing ideas to allow the viewers to enhance it manifold in their heads. The best part of that film was the muscular middle-section showing a tantrik sequence where the protagonist appears to be trapped in a haze between reality and nightmare, not knowing which is which. The crafting of that sequence indicated a director with strong horror chops if he could control some of his other excesses, and it was with some anticipation that I sat down to Bali.

After a short prologue, Bali's main story begins with Srikanth (Swapnil Joshi) and his son Mandar (Samarth Jadhav). The opening moments are devoted to showing the close affection between the widower father and the little boy. Unfortunately, this is through cloying dialog and sentimental twaddle music that generates a sinking feeling about what lies ahead. Moving ahead, Mandar falls faint while playing cricket and is rushed by the father to the hospital, where incidentally he had been birthed.

Jansanjeevani Hospital (the name roughly translates as 'panacea for the masses') is where the bulk of the film is set. It is an old-style private-cum-charitable hospital setting with a closed-up disused wing, playing the same function of isolated eerie location as the remote sugarcane field in Lapachhapi. Once inside, Swapnila Gupta's script pulls out the corks on the weird stuff, as Mandar meets another child patient Bhaskar, who seems to move in and out at will, and claims to communicate with a nurse named Elizabeth who lives in the abandoned wing with the broken boarded-up windows.

This is also where the narrative becomes wobbly in credibility: The charming Dr. Radhika Shenoy (Pooja Sawant, returning from Lapachhapi) may radiate a caring attitude towards her pediatric wards, and is the daughter of the doctor that officiated Mandar's birth, but the fact that on his very first day in the hospital there are at least 3 instances of child patients, including Mandar, wandering off unattended and being found in strange places should have raised louder warning bells in Srikanth's mind. Even given that his financial difficulties may not give him a lot of choice about medical aid for his son, in an age where folks are ready to raise hell and bust a doctor's nose for any perceived negligence, Srikanth's wimpy acceptance of the "Oh hey, that kid's gone off again" situation in the hospital is strange. Perhaps the fact that Mandar was born there gives him a lingering attachment of familiarity and trust. Perhaps Dr. Radhika's charms are not restricted to her child patients alone. But the script does not trouble to give us ground for Srikanth's passivity.

It also does not sufficiently denote Srikanth's social circumstances. What does he do for a living? How does he manage work while at the hospital? Why does this amiable guy not seem to have any relatives / neighbors / friends to call upon? I am not a huge advocate for a story being explained to death, but there is an noticeable vacuum of context here. All we get is a lot of scenes where Srikanth implores Mandar to stay in his bed, while the brat (oh yes, that kid is annoying) whines incessantly about wanting to meet Elizabeth. These lapses in narrative are not sufficiently compensated for by the scare quotient. For seasoned horror fans, the clumsy cliches - like blood appearing on the hand-drawn map of the abandoned wing that Mandar gives Srikanth - generate more eye-rolling than dread. The whispery voices and glimpses of disfigured spooks passing from behind or reaching out have no freshness.

While not hugely enthralled, I did want to know where all of this leads to, and stuck out till the end. This eventually yielded benefits with one late scene showing dramatic character reveals and unveiling the cause of the eerie manifestations. There are also some important statements made about the modus operandi of hospitals and shady donation calls. While not as powerful as the aforementioned tantrik sequence from Lapachhapi, it is a heartening reminder of the maker's potential. Sad then, that it comes after so much empty noodling and is followed by a mundane finale.

Even with the lack of novelty, there's a decent story in Bali (and a hospital is a great horror setting - check out 1994's The Kingdom) A focused appeal to the sensitivities of horror buffs could have provided a well-made time-killer. But there are serious issues with the execution, subtlety being the biggest casualty. The incessant background score that seeks to underline every emotion only assaults the eardrums; Vishal would do better to trust his audience, and avoid such spoon-feeding. At the same time, the macabre element is anemic, and apart from that one late scene, there is little here that hasn't been done long before and to better effect.

As it stands, Bali does not live up to the ballyhoo.

 

The Disciple [dir. Chaitanya Tamhane]

There are two measures by which Chaitanya Tamhane's new film may be measured. First, as a follow-up to Court, his seminal exploration of the machinery of the Indian legal system. Court (reviewed on this site HERE) was the antithesis of all Indian legal dramas that had appeared till then (and even most foreign films I have seen), not concerned with generating courtroom fireworks, but realistically depicting an ongoing proceeding in context of the greater institution which carries on in its phlegmatic fashion regardless of how the wheels of justice turn for any individual. The Disciple promises to bring that same kind of non-judgemental (ha!) fly-on-the-wall observation in its journey through the world of Indian classical music.

To read the rest of the review, submitted as a Readers' write-in to Baradwaj Rangan's blog, please go HERE

Lapachhapi aka Hide and Seek [dir. Vishal Furia]

In the long history of Indian cinema, horror has always been less served. This is probably because horror is the genre that suffers most from the potluck style of movie-making mainstream Indian cinema has predominantly followed. For a film to be effective as horror, a certain purity of approach becomes essential. Thankfully, in the past decade or thereabouts, we have seen an uptick in 'pure horror' features, and even ones where horror is blended with other genres, it is done without cheapening. Of the ones I have seen and recall:

• Tumbbad (2018) - An immersive folk horror from Rahi Anil Barve. It has a demon, but the most frightening monster in it is human greed.
• Kaul - A Calling (2016) - Aadish Keluskar's Marathi debut feature is that rare species, an evocative piece of existential nihilism that recalls the contemporary horror fiction of Thomas Ligotti and Vilas Sarang. Sadly, it also has the availability of an OOP Ligotti or Vilas Sarang work.
• Pizza (2012) - This Karthik Subbaraj venture is a few rungs below the mastery of the above names, but for its time, a refreshingly serious attempt at an eerie movie.
• Pisaasu (2014) - With shades of A. Vincent's Malayalam classic Bhargavi Nilayam, mad wiz Mysskin mixes horror and romance (from beyond the grave), finally going into territory that, without obvious spoilers, recalls a cult Brad Anderson film.
• 13B: Fear Has a New Address (2009) - It begins with an inauspicious retread of bog standard haunted flat tropes, and there are avoidable song breaks, but the central plot of Vikram Kumar's multi-lingual is a clever play on India's obsession with television soaps, and the climax doesn't pull the punches.

Still only a handful, so when I was recommended by trustworthy sources to watch new director Vishal Furia's Lapachhapi as another homegrown example of pure horror I was intrigued enough to actually buy a one-month Zee5 subscription (which carries its own horror story, but that's for later).

After a disturbing prologue in a rural field involving a heavily pregnant woman and some kids, the film puts us inside a car in which a married couple - Neha and Tushar - are traveling to a remote location. Their discussions reveal that the husband has been forced to go on the run from violent creditors, and an aged subordinate at his workplace has offered to house them in his village till the matter blows over. The connection with the prologue is made when they reach the location of the colleague's village...and yes, Neha is heavily pregnant.

A good amount of time is spent establishing the setting of this temporary home. It is a lone one-storey rough-hewn rural house in the middle of a sugarcane field with a confusing maze of narrow-cut paths; shrouded in silence and suffocating alienation, this choice of location for a spooky film is gold. Even a simple walk amidst these surroundings with only the company of ambient sounds has the potential to arouse a delicious sensation of dread.

Then there is Tulsabai, the wife of Tushar's benefactor and self-appointed caretaker to Neha. She is all maternal kindness to start with, making Neha feel at home and attending to all her needs, but is that the end of it? There is an ambiguity to her character, which over the course of the narrative makes for some of Lapachhapi's strongest moments.

When Tushar talks about going back to the city to do a temporary recce leaving Neha in the care of their hosts, horror fans know it's the signal for weird events to happen, and they do. Knocks on doors, elusive children running around, a portable cassette player with a scratchy playtime tune. These events lead to conflict between Neha and Tulsabai, which erupts into a virile display of horror theatrics, including a genuinely spooky tantrik scene. Lapachhapi is at its best here, in its depiction of Neha's disorientation. We do not know if the interactions between her and a quicksilver Tulsabai are real or hallucinations in the pregnant woman's mind. It helps that the casting is immaculate - Pooja Sawant as Neha and veteran Usha Naik as Tulsabai are center-stage for most of the film and give involved performances. Excellent use is made of the setting and the night-time photography is evocative.

I wish it were all positive, but Lapachhapi is not without flaws. For one the running time (approximately 2 hours) is stretched well beyond need. I can understand that a rhythm and sense of locale is being established, and a modicum of repetition is required to acclimatize the viewer, but even with these considerations, the film could have done with some serious trimming of 20-25 min. I had mentioned earlier that the remote and lonely setting is in itself unsettling, but it would appear that the makers did not have sufficient faith in the idea; the first half is full of instances where they try to raise horror by use of stock dread music every time Neha turns a corner or looks toward a door/window, to the point it becomes annoying. And while the overall story arc does have a justifiable stance against female infanticide, it would have been nice to employ a less strident tone at the end, considering Neha's still vulnerable predicament. That said, even with these flaws, fans of Indian horror are encouraged to check Lapachhapi out where they can...

...which currently means, facing the horror that is the Zee5 app. The very idea of a streaming app that fails to support basic casting to a television or AV receiver is in this day and age a shocker. The Zee5 app shows a cast button but tapping it will only generate a blank screen on your TV display while the video continues to play on the phone. This is an issue confirmed by multiple users on forums. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am not one to watch movies on a phone. I had to compromise by logging into the website on my PC browser and watching with headphones. While the bulk of the experience was okay, there was 1-2 instances where the film froze and refused to go ahead till I skipped a bit (streaming equivalent of a scratched disc?) The provided English subtitles are tiny and I could not find any option to adjust the size. Also, they seemed to have been incompetently formatted, frequently getting clipped, and sometimes using wrong words (On occasion, Bhaurao became Bhalerao and Tulsabai became Tulsi). While some of the blame would lie with the studio that formatted the film for streaming, I am certainly not enthused to scroll through Zee5's offerings to even recoup the cost of my 99rs 1-month subscription.

Court [dir. Chaitanya Tamhane]

Court made waves more than a year back when it was screened at the Venice and Mumbai festivals, and was honored with the National Award for Best Feature Film, which is amazing for a debut feature. After having watched I can say it's worth the hype.

To be frank, it's not for the impatient or people that insist on a dramatic experience. In the film, a social activist (Vira Sathidar) is arrested on charges of having incited a sewer worker to commit suicide with an inflammatory song. The film mainly deals with the proceedings of the trial of this individual. But the script is not focused on the activist character, who in most part is a silent or monosyllabic cipher. Nor, unlike what we usually see in Indian movies, are the trial proceedings a showcase of verbal fireworks. In fact many a time, we see the trial played out with the context of the other proceedings of the court. We see how a court moves from one case to another, making a quick decision in one, postponing another, the debates about whether or not an accused can be given bail in the interim between court hearings.

The spotlight is on the major players of the court - the prosecution (Geetanjali Kulkarni), the defence (Vivek Gomber), the judge (Pradeep Joshi). In a conventional film, the prosecution would be presented as evil and the defense as good. Here, both are just doing their jobs. We also get a look into their personal lives, which go on regardless of their professional duties. The defense lawyer is fighting the case as a social cause, but he himself is rather well-to-do, who doesn't think much of dropping a few thousand rupees for an evening at a pub (perhaps he makes his money working for rich clients indulging the social exploitation his activist client is protesting against). The prosecutor is a lower middle-class lady whose idea of an outing is lunch with her family at an Udipi-type restaurant followed by a local drama. She has to worry a lot more about the cost of living, and in that sense is closer in lifestyle to the accused than her counterpart. There are no personal egos involved in their arguments in court, each one is doing her/his own job, at the end of which they go back to their respective lives. The case comes to an end, a verdict is passed, but is that all? No, life goes on, there are and will be new cases, many same as the old cases. The film also has an epilogue dealing with the personal life of the main judge in the case. Again it drives the point that for everyone, life and the court go on.

Using many non-professional actors and a very grounded visual style, writer-director Chaitanya Tamhane focuses on the realism and bureaucracy of the institution, and thus makes them come alive in a manner we don't normally see in movies (since mainstream Hollywood also tends to have very glamorized dramatic court scenes). Highly recommended for offbeat movie fans.

For the fools like me that didn't catch this at the cinema, Reliance DVD gives a nice A/V presentation of the film (digitally shot), with a decent making of. Watch it.

Deool aka The Temple [dir. Umesh Kulkarni]

On the whole I did like Deool a good deal more than Umesh Kulkarni's previous effort Valu – The Wild Bull. The comparison is apt because Deool can be seen as almost a follow-up to Valu. It is set in a similar sleepy hamlet where again, an unusual event cascades into a series of actions and consequences. Here the local simpleton Keshav (Girish Kulkarni, who bagged a well-deserved National Award for his role) while resting under a tree, believes that he has had a sighting of Dutta aka Shiva, and dashes through the village announcing it to all and sundry. But not everyone is happy with the news: Social worker Anna (Dilip Prabhavalkar) is a rationalist and the local politician Bhau (Nana Patekar) has been ordered by his higher-ups to convey “Madam's” message of development (no prizes for guessing which party is being referred to). They try to play down the event but the superstitions of the local populace, including Bhau's wife (Sonali Kulkarni, looking more attractive in her plump homely avatar) and the machinations of Bhau's nephew who sees the building of a temple as his way to breaking out of Bhau's stranglehold, take matters all out of proportion.

Like with Valu, the rural setting has been realized very well, and in its way the film raises some pertinent issues about the line between development and commercialism. The building of the temple brings piped water and electricity and prosperity to the village, but renders it a tourist-happy stop that the locals labor to feed off while their fields lie uncultivated. Keshav's faith in his sighting is genuine and he too is initially pleased at the striking changes that Dutta has brought to his erstwhile ignored hamlet, but grows gradually disillusioned at the commercialization of devotion that his neighbors and friends have gotten into in the aftermath of building the temple – It's a shrill but meaningful point that most of them have cut down their actual visits to the deity's sanctum because they're too busy profiting off the faith of visiting pilgrims. It's not absolutely bleak and biting like Billy Wilder's Ace in The Hole, though, and the people behind the temple are not unduly demonized. In a wonderful scene that comes midway into the film, Bhau and Anna have a debate over the legitimacy of the events that have occurred in the wake of the temple and the effect it will have on the place and the people. There is no absolute right or wrong here, and appreciation must be given to the script and the mature performances of the two seasoned actors for walking this fine line.

What keeps me from unreservedly singing this film's praises is its very meandering style, something that I had a greater problem with in Valu. I grant that there is a certain sense to depicting rural life with a slowed down rhythm, but at 2 ½ hours the film gets tedious, has some uneven tonal changes and is not especially richer for it; in fact the impact is diluted by repetition and pointless excursions into too many territories. A good story is one that carefully selects its themes and threads, and does not try to jam in every single idea the writers thought of. There are some more obvious clunkers like a disconnected item song, an ironic addition for a film that talks about exploitative commercialization. But the film is still to be appreciated for its mostly sincere telling of an interesting original story. Here's hoping for more and better from these guys.

P.S. The opening credits sequence featuring "sand paintings" is one of the most charming and creative sequences I have seen. Budding artists will love this.