Poignant, painful and poetic, Vinod Kapri’s gently humorous drama is a highlight at Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival
“It is we who are lost”, says one of the unlikely main characters of Vinod Kapri’s cinematic ballad to the power in a moment of mournful revelation. It’s a scene that cuts right to the core of the profound story about persistence, belonging and eternal romance as well as into the hearts of the audience. At Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival, where the allegorical fairytale ran in the main competition, it wound the Indian director-writer the Audience Award. It’s a surprising but hopeful choice. Its octogenarian protagonists, subtle social critique and minimalist plotline make Kapri’s work the opposite of a conventional crowd pleaser.
Instead of traditional narrative devices, the existentialist story relies on the universal messages and emotional depth of ancient myths. It centers on elderly Padam (Padam Singh) and his equally withered wife Tulsi (Heera Devi) who spend their whole lives in their remote mountain village. There’s neither electricity nor running water and in the frugal hut the old couple cooks over a fire pit. For food or the doctor, they pay with one of their goats. Time seems to have forgotten this isolated spot. But of course, time never forgets. This is made depressingly clear by the cultural, economical and structural disintegration of their small community.
As the last few friends and neighbors prepare to move to the city, they urge the protagonists to do the same. But the headstrong couple refuses and hides its loneliness under its routine of petty arguments. This constant bickering is as amiable as it is amusing, and not a sign of aversion but deep affection. Their mutual love speaks from small gestures of care and well-meaning conceits. Some of these little lies can be self-deceptions such as the stubborn belief that new residents would repopulate the dilapidation village. Others are carefully constructed schemes such as the conviction that their only child would come for a visit.
Though regular letters from their son keep his parent’s hopes up, the only younger face they ever see is that of the postman. The letters he brings are always the same. Time after time their son postpones the date of his visit. Whereas Padam seems to have resigned himself to not seeing his son before his death, Tulsi is devastated. Her futile anticipation plays out like a heart-wrenching twist on Beckett. Their health is failing, their house crumbling and the titular funeral pyres are finally built, awaiting Tulsi and Padam as they wait for the only person they have in the outside world.
The elegiac soundtrack underlines that the captivating fable is actually an eulogy for a past that can never return. With contemplative patience, the camera captures the majestic landscapes that dwarfs the moldering village and its last two inhabitants. Their pyres are markers of a fate sealed long ago. Kapri’s gentle portrait of his stoic, grumpy and loving characters is careful to not glorify old times. Lightened by bits of warmhearted humor, the wistful parting is also a farewell from unfulfilled hopes, overturned ideals and shared memories. Both sad and symbolic, the conclusion grants the poetic tale a sense of comforting endurance.
Neither special effects nor studio settings disturb the palpable authenticity of the protagonist’s existence. Their strenuous daily tasks are as real as the majestic mountainside. In front of this original setting of mythical beauty, their intuitive performances feel truthful and unpretentious. Like many people on society’s local, economical or structural fringes, their lives are wiped away by a specific kind of change. It’s not progress, but the forceful assimilation to an urban lifestyle that pulls people in by draining their local communities. This socio-political awareness is a steady undercurrent of this enthralling film, as rich in meaning as the legends it emulates.
- OT: Pyre
- Director: Vinod Kapri
- Screenplay: Vinod Kapri
- Year: 2024
- Distribution | Production © Studio Soho International Limited
