I have a question for Shubhashish Bhutiani, writer-director of the National Award winning movie Mukti Bhawan (Hotel Salvation). How did he shoot the climax scene of the funeral? In today’s high tech world, a tracking shot of little over two minutes should not be surprising. What makes this shot special is that it is shot through a narrow lane in Banares, descending a stony staircase that looks tricky to manage even without the camera. A less difficult but equally effective tracking scene is when Vimla (Navnindra Behl) dies. Her body is kept on the ghat and the camera follows the protagonist down the same path, until he reaches the body.
Throughout the movie, Shubhashish has dared to do something that I have not seen any recent Indian directors do. In many scenes, he follows the Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu and places his camera in a corner. The characters move, interact and the camera is watching all this as if it’s a person sitting in a corner. We have become numb to the overuse of camera movement in today’s movies – camera going round and round in circles around characters or panning left and right just because it can and so on. It feels as if the director and cameraman are on a supply of endless cups of coffee. In contrast, Shubhashish keeps the camera still for major part of the movie so when you do see the climax tracking scene in its full dynamic capability, it hits you like a ton of bricks.
Most of the movie is shot on location in Varanasi. Cinematography by Michael McSweeney and David Huwiler follows the rule that to make a movie that looks good, the individual frames should stand on their own. In other words, if you pause the movie at any point, the frame should make a memorable photograph. Mukti Bhawan has many such frames. Like Ozu’s movies, it is very particular about the composition of the frame. The scenes on the ghats of Varanasi remind one of Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar (The World of Apu).
The story of Mukti Bhawan is very simple. An ageing father Daya (Lalit Behl) wants to go to Varanasi because he feels that his time has come. His son Rajiv (Adil Hussain) is reluctant to leave in the midst of managing his high pressure job, and preparations for the marriage of his daughter Sunita (Palomi Ghosh). Eventually, he succumbs and the duo travel to Mukti Bhawan, a place in Varanasi where old people who feel their time has come go for the final journey.
Most of the scenes are underplayed brilliantly by the cast. If the camera is like a bystander, what’s happening in front of the camera is real life. The two central characters of Daya and Rajiv are perfect in their respective roles. Many Indian viewers know Adil Hussain for his supporting roles in movies like Aiyaary and English Vinglish. These movies have barely scratched his true potential as an actor. He has worked in English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Norwegian and French movies, including The Life of Pi and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In Mukti Bhawan, he gets a chance to show what he is capable of. The animosity that he feels towards his father as a result of childhood abuse, the frustrations coming from a nagging boss and the worry about his daughter’s marriage – Rajiv’s character has many shades and Adil does him full justice. He underplays the characters for most of movie, interspersed with occasional emotional busts such as when he thinks his father is dying.
Many of the posts on this blog are about entertaining movies that are blockbusters but this does not mean that I am averse to serious movies. My only requirement is that the movie should keep me engaged. If the director does not make any effort to reach out to the audience and thinks that the onus is on the audience to decipher his movie, I am afraid I don’t have time to engage with such a movie.
Mukti Bhawan ran for 150 days in Japan, and did good business in South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. It was a box office failure in India, perhaps proving the legendary director Satyajit Ray right when he said that Indian audience lacks maturity.
