Barah x Barah (MX Player)
Starring Gyanendra Tripathi, Bhumika Dubey, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, Harish Khanna
Directed by Gaurav Madan
Rating: **** (4 stars)
Like the Ganga splashing against the eroding river banks of Varanasi, this precious little film with a big heart captures the undulating rhythms of life with such subtle seamlessness, we almost miss the point: there is no point to life;we live,we die. We sometimes leave a legacy behind , like Lata Mangeshkar would. Most of us die unsung. Forgotten and flung to anonymity in no time at all. Rama naam satya hai.
Barah x Barah, a remarkably tender subtle and unostentatious debut by director Gaurav Madan(who has some striking short-films to his credit before this impressive feature film), captures the essence, the nullity of existence in mundane images and dialogues . The characters, their homes , lives and words have an assuaging lifelike feel and texture, as if the director forgot to yell ‘cut’ and the actors continued to live the lives assigned to them by the script.There is a listless continuity to the lives led by the characters.No fancy music , no lingering lenses define these lives. They are who they are.
The look and texture of authenticity do not leap at us in any self congratulatory motions. Rather, director Gaurav Madan roams Varanasi to know what it is ‘ghat’.
I have ghat-feeling that the actors(who look supremely oblivious to the camera) spent considerable time in Varanasi before shooting. To look so naturalized one has to be a part of the Varanasi’s complex cosmopolitan culture.
Madan never lets the narrative forget PM Narendra Modi’s ubiquitous presence. His voice floats out at us from blaring television sets and politics never far away from the characters’ range of topics, though the hero Sooraj(Gyanendra Tripathi) is outwardly apolitical and wholly taken up with the task of making a living for his family: an ailing father(brilliantly played by Harish Khanna the protagonist of Pavan Kaul’s pretentious directorial debut Tathagata), a silently supportive wife Meena(Bhumika Dubey, so natural she makes the camera seem like an intruder) and their little son.
Later this small silently struggling family is joined by Sooraj’s sister Mansi(Geetika Vidya Ohlyan) who has moved to Delhi, a betrayal for which the father has never quite forgiven her.
None of this is spoken. Most Hindi films make the mistake of overstating their case. Not this one. As in most middleclass families very little emotional energy is expressed. Everything is to be understood. Sooraj non-intellectual unprofitable gaze at the corpses he photographs is punctuated once in while by his wife’s pertinent chiding.
“Instead of clicking dead people why don’t you try clicking living people?”
Sooraj is a loyal loving appreciative husband who admits he married a ‘superwoman’. The film tilts its pugdee at all those faceless people in bustling towns who toil from morning to night without any hope or expectation of a reward.
Making a film as noiselessly brilliant as Barah x Barah is just as thankless. Those who are in it are not doing it for the fame .There is an uncelebrated tragedy at the heart of lives lived on the edge.Gaurav Madan’s slim flab-free noiseless film understands the human tragedy of obscurity.
