Thithi (2015) - movie review

Thithi (2015) – movie review

Rating – 5/5

Cast : Channegowda, Thammegowda

Directed by Raam Reddy

Review by Zulfiqar

            In a time when Indian cinema is suffused with commercial pot-boilers in every regional language, with very thinly scattered (almost reduced to miniscule) number of serious films, which drive sense into the audience mind and strike the chord of plausibility, comes ‘Thithi’, a beautifully crafted kannada film, which resonates the vibes of Satyajit Ray’s Appu trilogy. Like the master filmmaker’s movie, ‘Thithi’ has a keen eye for reality and the nature of rural life, an almost forgotten chapter in Indian cinema. Even if rural movies are made, they are redundant with meaningless humor, which completely masks the real trials and tribulations, which the country populace faces and lives with.

            Raam Reddy, a new director on the block, has a very observant camera, which focuses on the daily tics and twitches of country life. There are almost hundreds of instances in the movie, which are seamlessly stitched into the story making the whole picture not just realistic but act like a knee-jerk response to cast the viewer into a deep meditative indulgence. I will come to that later, but let me just brief the plot at first.

            The story opens when a hundred and one year old, Century Gowda, a well known figure in his village and the villages around, dies. His grandson, Thammanna, along with the funeral, also schemes to taking over the deceased’s property by way of inheritance. But then there is the problem of his father, a simpleton and free spirited Gaddappa, who has no interest in the properties and the protocol associated with it. To inherit the lands and sell them, Thammanna wants his father out of the way. After drawing his death certificate, he makes him undertake a cross-country tour so that he would be out of his hair while he conducts the business peacefully with the elite buyers. Gaddappa avoids the tour and tags along with a group of shepherds-nomads. One of the shepherd’s daughter is being pursued by Gaddappa’s grandson.

            The movie is crisp in its screenplay with the story being told in a straitlaced manner devoid of any speck of artificiality. There is not even a moment in the movie, which would irk the audience’s sense of originality. The story though has a poetic injustice at the heart of it, delivers the plot as a result of consequence, not contrivance. When Thammanna plans to sell his grandfather’s land, look how the director spreads the breadcrumbs. Thammanna’s friend advises a rich buyer’s name and when the man suggests that he wants documents in order, the former goes to a Taluk officer at his photocopy shop. The director doesn’t show it as a big, airy place where one conducts business, but as a small, constricted place, where the single employee (municipality officer’s wife) does her job of handling the photocopier machine with a detachment of not knowing the man, who comes to visit her husband. Thammanna’s long gaps of silence whenever he talks with the buyer or officer, is a naïve ploy for the other to get the work done with less of red-tape.

            But it is at the whole list of characters, where we find the spirit of the movie. The interior of Thamanna’s house has a small hall, where the whole family is living while delving on the ever-running television, which is showcasing an escapist fun from their dreariness. These minute observations add a lot of detail. The youngest daughter while doing her homework has a single eye on the TV set. the teenager son is surfing the internet porn on his mobile phone. Thammanna’s wife sides with her son, when the former chides him to work in the fields. She also wants a big feast for the funeral just to flaunt their status more than anything. Thammanna, himself, is churning his mind over the scheme of illegally selling his dead relative’s property. Everyone has a streak of their own perversion (except the youngest daughter).

            This makes Gaddappa’s plight look more legible to side himself away from the family. He doesn’t judge his son’s behavior, but he loses interest regarding the point of friends and family because of a very poignant reason, which we come to know in the midst of the movie. Even if the audience may have any misgiving regarding him as a hindrance to his son’s plan to sell the land, we later understand the real motivation for his meandering away. He doesn’t even want to attend his father’s own funeral. Retrospectively we even understand Century Gowda’s thought process while ruminating the opening shot of the movie, which is poetic and is full of irony. It may be his oldage senility, but he hates the people around citing his valid reasons. Are they really valid? We come to know later. But when he falls off in a tiny space near a hut-side, look how people flock to attend his death. They don’t much consider his words while he is alive.

            We can see the collective, social behavior of rural populace, which is hell-bent on tradition and rituality. The director in the end uses the latter aspect as a judgment weapon. The final shots speak of community spirit, which may have its origin as a materialistic cause, but then rejoices its fruits. The free-spirited son, however resorts to celebrate his loneliness.

The performances from all the leads are done in a dour manner and so, attaches the sense of everyday tone to it. Even when Thammanna’s son pursues the shepherd’s daughter, there isn’t any over-the-board flirting. It is more like a courting done with village naivety. Channegowda, who plays Gaddappa, doesn’t have any brilliance in his acting method. It’s plain-speaking, just like Thammegowda, who plays Thammanna. And just every other character. The brilliance in this acting is that it removes the artificiality of the histrionics. Not even a single character behaves in a dramatic way. When Thammanna shows the land to the buyer, look how the camera stays behind the actors while the former points out the boundaries. Observe when the buyer talks of the plot and about documents in his office and in his car. It’s crisp and upto the point. It is clear that villagers though may not have worldly knowledge and guile, they know about the mechanics of land-selling. There is no meaningless utterance of philosophy or nonsense dialogue.

Every successful movie should have its supporting cast, which serves its purpose by its character rather than its heavy dialogue. There are a host of characters around, who add color, just by their characteristics. Though the lady moneylender, Thammanna borrows has a small role, her attitude of attending the feast, which she says is being hosted by her money shows her stoic hand. The priest’s persistence of the elder son’s presence at the feast and ignorance of the village to his pleas, speaks volumes about his role and the materialistic behavior of the attending crowd.

The director plays perfect attention to the details of dowdy and dusty costumes, which replicates the lack of fashion and guile in country-life. In the way, the buyer behaves with Thammanna in the final scene, we can see the order and code of rural society. Doron Tempert’s camera does a rich job of showcasing the dusty and wild architecture with muddied lanes, bullock-cart make-shifted beds, interiors of sugarcane fields and many such things. Eregowda’s dialogue is crisp and sans any banality.

‘Thithi’ is a much-needed fresh breeze of Indian cinema, which I only wish would have come sooner. ‘Masaan’ was the last such film, which made you invest your intelligence in and explore your thoughts about human nature. They give you a sense of the world, you are living in and think about people’s minds, whom we superfluously judge while we interact in our everyday life. ‘Thithi’ doesn’t give you a moral story, but gives an inside eye into the slice of life, unexplored. There are so many such slices and there is so much to showcase. We are just at the beginning.