
Everything in the online world, particularly the content you engage with on a routine basis, is quite straightforward. “5 tips on this.” “3 phrases to avoid at all costs.” “35 products that every kitchen must have, handpicked from Amazon.”
The movie that I am going to discuss now – it is a very nice thing to tackle this issue. Here is a tale of people who may or may not have existed, in a town that surely seems plausible. Make what you will of this; the film is made for various interpretations.
Time frame is 1989, place is Naldera or some other town in the Himalayas like Mussoories which if you are from the north, you must have seen in your childhood summer holidays. First shot, you meet Dev. But before you see the character, a voice is heard that sounds like that of a toothbrush on a black backdrop. Raam Reddy would want you to feel the presence of the character Dev before being given the chance of seeing him on screen. As the visuals come into focus, we watch Dev applying what seems to be lotion or moisturizer on his shoulders which at first seems to be a funny characteristic of a man, but by the time this one-shot long, complex and long scene of Dev leaves the bathroom, then out of the room, across the room to his work space and outside to the fields with the camera following him most of the time, ends, something that strange has happened that the act of putting moisturizer on bare shoulders has a completely different connotation now.
Raam Reddy is a co-writer of the film’s script and within the plot, which is “very true to life, yet peculiar in its own right,” expands with respect to the couple Dev and Nandini living in the hilly area, they are together with their little son Juju, their daughter Vanya has gone away for studies, but now it is a school break and the child is already at home. Wives tend to be quite normal in an aristocratic family a patriarch does have a lot of land, which is not depicted as particularly interesting for any viewer – it can be said that Dev’s ancestors were the British loyalists who were trusted with the orchards. “Welcome to Vandana and Deb’s family, where everyone is polite, educated and cultured,” points out Raam, but whispers a little “Maybe not now” about the head of the family, Deb. His whole life Dev is being some sort of tasks for himself, then intimidates the audience with a dichotomy of – mentally, it is not the case at all. At the start of the film, right after the first clearing the trees’ branches are set alight, the majority would be expect a proper response but to then find this man simply astonished is terrifying. Finally, he might have to face nemesis, yet knows not how to go about in such warfare.
For all his character development, there is absolutely no evidence as to where he learnt to confront so much and perhaps this is why he is so random now. The film drives home the point of how erratic Dev’s character is at its most intense state time and again. Dev now inadept thanks to the environment and circumstances making a series of mistakes. Right, Manoj Bajpayee has been given a chance to shine and in Joram plays Brenner superbly. Somehow he has managed to release studies too close together but as different as Joram, Killer Soup and The Fable are, so are the performances.
Dev, of course, has a wife Nandini who is aware not to disturb the order of things either. If it has to sing, then sing. If it has to cook, then cooks. If it has to pack the house and relocate, then it has to. It is less of an oppressive condition and more obedient because she knows the secret of dev. Nandini, played by Priyanka Bose, whose name in itself has divine appeal, is endowed with the charm of a singer for she is reminiscent of a place which she has been yearning for ages.
Deepak Dobriyal’s Mohan, the estate manager, is the protagonist who speaks the story in voice-over. Mohan is incredibly devoted, whose name is equally divine, is quite subservient. It is a fine feeling to watch Deepak Dobriyal being quite active on screen in any role, more satisfying to watch how he entirely conquers a tough and dramatic character for whom the actor is scarcely able to display the theatrics he is known for. In an interesting moment, Dev tells Mohan to close the door as he leaves the place; it is the expression of the actor that blends disappointment and disdain that lingers with me about the film. I think like Dev, only when the circumstances turn adverse, does Mohan also come to know that his life has lan more than what he has been simply going through. One tends to listen to him say that thirty-five years have gone by since these events took place and one wonders what would have happened when leaving the orchards; he thinks he went and wrote a book and is now sitting in some warm room at a book launch reading extracts from it with a candle flickering and soft music playing in the background.
There are things that one may question in The Fable, some things which are left unresolved, a subplot involving looking for a monk was rendered poorly, and the final conflict incorporating a handycam was also one of those things that did not make sense. In the words of Raam Reddy, every single scene in this film has an invitation to fill in the blanks, even at times including things he is not able to quite grasp himself, like how people used to tell us about strange and extraordinary figures residing in mountains far away from us. He’s made a film and the impact of the medium is visible in its overexposure to the real world as well as in its greater tangibility. It’s an experiment that bears fruit; you are spellbound and the din of magic realism that is right before your eyes is your reality as well. Everything takes a back seat and as the screen starts to shake and you see dust particles swirl and zip across frames, it’s 1989. The cinema hall that you are in is dead, the woman sitting around you is no more, and fireflies come out of the screen surrounding Dev’s image and completely enveloping you.
In the film is it claimed an allegory of colonialism teaching the viewer that empires one day will burn and be no more? Is it a film of a jeer to man’s avarice? or is it an ecological parable in which we are urged to reconnect with the environment in the more primal sense? There is also sharp criticism against authoritarianism, too much power in one leadership. Or rather is it only a playground for the cinematographer Sunil Borkar to devise entrancing and cryptic interface for the audience to engage within the game setting?
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