Release
date:
|
November 24, 2017
|
Director:
|
Nila Madhab Panda
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Sanjay Mishra, Ranvir Shorey, Tillottama Shome, Bhupesh Singh, Ekta
Sawant
Hindi
|
How do you teach a child living
in a drought-ridden region the meaning of the word monsoon? An amusing early
classroom scene in Kadvi Hawa, in
which a teacher asks his students to name the four seasons, encapsulates
everything that this film sets out to do: give us reason to think, even while
unexpectedly entertaining us in a grim setting.
There are no easy answers in Kadvi Hawa (Bitter Wind, though the
filmmaker translates it as Dark Wind). In fact, there are no answers at all.
Writer-director Nila Madhab Panda’s latest work, on a poor family in a
drought-stricken north Indian village, is filled with questions that strike at
the heart of our understanding of humanity.
It is a story of what climate
change does – and will do – to our species. It is more than that too: a
portrait of desperation, for one. If a victim of extreme poverty, government
apathy, the criminal foolishness of generations of human beings and other
back-breaking circumstances, were to harm others in his situation to save his
own skin, would you condemn him or sympathise? Is there such a thing as a right
reaction here?
It has been a few days since I
watched this film and I am still grappling with that discussion in my head, as
I have for years since I read Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a troubling account of the author’s time
in concentration camps during World War II – troubling not only for the
staggering scale of Nazi cruelty described in its pages, but also because of
Frankl’s frank narration of the survival tactics used by some inmates.
In a different time and place, Kadvi Hawa examines the same harsh
truths, in a world that feels more comfortable with itself if it can view
victims of wrongdoing as repositories of unshakeable virtue.
Kadvi
Hawa revolves
around a blind old man called Hedu (played by Sanjay Mishra) who is worried that
his son Mukund (Bhupesh Singh), an impoverished farmer, will commit suicide as
he grapples with crop failure and an unrepaid loan. Mukund now sustains the
family by doing odd jobs that bring in meagre earnings. His wife Parvati
(Tillottama Shome) works from morning till night to keep the house running.
They have two children: their schoolgoing daughter Kuhu (Ekta Sawant) and their
baby Pihu.
Hedu’s fears are heightened by
the arrival of the local bank’s loan recovery agent Gunu (Ranvir Shorey), who
has a reputation for driving at least a couple of people to suicide at each of
his postings.
Already, there are those in the
vicinity who have taken their own lives. In this scenario, where nature’s wrath
spares no one, unexpected alliances emerge.
When things go wrong, we all want
someone – a person or two, an institution perhaps – to blame. Kadvi Hawa offers no easy scapegoats, no
black-and-white rationalisations, but a challenging, absorbing realm of grays.
This is an unrelenting film where even when humour rears its head, it does so
to make a poignant point. Ramanuj Dutta’s cinematography underlines the
starkness of the landscape, delivering Hedu’s land to us in all its blandness,
as the dustbowl that it is.
The acting – by the primary cast
and satellite artistes – is uniformly solid. And the two leads, Mishra and
Shorey, deliver towering performances that might make you want to erase from
memory some of the more high-profile commercial films they have worked on in
Bollywood. 
Although climate change is the
overriding theme, writer Nitin Dixit (who is credited for the story, screenplay
and dialogues, with Panda himself named as a co-writer of the story) finds
space here to explore relationships that blossom in misery. There is such
sweetness to Hedu’s bond with Pihu, for instance. And in their home, where
tension runs high but fights are few and low-key, we sense a numbness
camouflaging the despair the adults feel.
Kadvi
Hawa could
perhaps be seen as a morality tale, but it does not overtly preach. Although
its climax walks a fine line on the subject of natural retribution that could
be questionable in this superstitious nation, the film’s victory lies in the
fact that as the credits roll, we are forced to introspect because the
storyteller give us no one in particular to hate.
Nila Madhab Panda’s calling card
so far has been his multiple-award-winning 2011 venture I Am Kalam, a sunny tale of a bright kid who is desperate for an
education. Kadvi Hawa is a complete
break from that film’s tone, but equally compelling.
Reciting a poem he has written on
pollution for this one, Gulzar’s voiceover runs over the titles in the end. “…ye zameen darti hai ab insaanon se,” he
tells us. This land now fears humans. Not governments, not politicians or
industrialists alone, but humans as a whole. Kadvi Hawa is a bitter pill to swallow, and one that is designed to
compel us to look within.
Rating
(out of five stars): ***1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U
|
Running time:
|
95 minutes
|
This review was also published on Firstpost:
No comments:
Post a Comment