[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]
In the opening scene of Raam Reddy's Thithi, an old grouch spares no one walking past him as he gibes at them. The men get yelled at, the women barely get more than a murmur. People ignore him, a detail that suggests that he has been doing this for quite some time, and a group of children giggle at his antics. And when he gets up to relieve himself, he slumps over and dies. In a matter of minutes a small group of people discover him lying in the dust and declare him dead.
This particular sequence tells us a lot about what is to follow, and marks the film's first triumph. A world is created, a world of sounds and sights, a lived-in world, within the first five minutes. Before we meet the folk of the village of Nodekoplu, we are already familiar with them and their milieu. We don't need the introductions, really. They can be skipped. But they are not. We are introduced to them again but in a different, more delightful way. Now the news of the centenarian's death has to travel and reach his son, grandson and great-grandson. We see their apathetic reactions to it and then, understatedly, the people's. They begin talking about a grand farewell, grand because the man lived to be a hundred, and getting the rituals done properly, their eagerness to do so not being shared by any of the dead man's kin. But most of all they talk about the feast.
Thithi captures the flavor and the color of rural India quite unlike any other film in recent memory. Like all films set in Indian villages, fictitious or otherwise, it is a busy one, bursting with characters and situations, seamlessly jumping from one to the other. It's like watching one of those old Hindi television programs that revolved around a bunch of likable characters picked out from everyday life and their repartees. (I wouldn't have been noticed if Thithi played with the Doordarshan logo on the top-right of the screen.) But it is a film with its own wit, its own characters, its own world, and its own identity. For someone like me who isn’t clued in to Kannada cinema, it comes across as a breath of fresh air. A more distinctly Indian film has not found its way to the theaters this year, and I reckon there will not be.
The old man owned a piece of land that should be inherited by his son now that he is dead. But the old drunkard with a lion-like mane of white hair who loafs around all day clearly isn’t the ideal candidate to be declared its owner. He would probably sell it off for a small sum to buy more hooch. His son, a responsible individual with a family to feed, instantly tries to get his hands on it. It’s not greed, we find out; it’s a reasonable decision. But the father and his son have had a falling out. Working from a wonderfully layered script he co-wrote with Eregowda, Reddy communicates the stiffness the father-son duo share through a terrific scene. The son is disgusted by his father’s habit of wandering aimlessly armed with a tiny bottle of rum all day. The father is still somewhat tender towards his son although there is cautiousness in the way he deals with him, and the son can only broach the topic of the piece of land. No pleasantries are exchanged. The argument is heated on the son’s part but diplomatic on the father’s. Reddy’s talent is evident in the way he handles the scene, saving us a flashback where we would have seen them having the argument that led to their fallout for the sake of a little more clarity. A lesser filmmaker would have settled for it. We don’t get the flashback, of course, because we don’t need it. The actors, both non-professionals like the rest of the cast, shine. And when we are in such good hands, we need not worry.
For me the greatest films have many memorable moments but no standout scenes. There’s consistency found in them. I have always believed that the best scenes in any film hog our attention and deny us the pleasure of experiencing the film as a whole. We always look forward to the next few scenes to measure up to the finer ones, only to be disappointed when they don’t. Consistency eternalizes them, because we remember the impact the film had on us as a whole, not the sum of its strongest parts. Thithi is one such film. One will talk about this moment in it or that moment in it, savor it repeatedly as they discuss it, but would be at a loss for words when asked to talk about its strongest scene. Each sequence comes with its own magical bits, its own moments.
But the film is all about its characters. Whatever little plot this film has is only a backdrop for us to observe them, observe how situations define people and how they change them, bringing out the best and worst in them. In this case, the dead man’s thithi ceremony serves as one, and in the busyness and small-scale chaos that follows, we get to see how it has influenced the characters to be different people. The son has no qualms about bribing his father to disappear for a few months so that he can usurp the land owned by him, and his son has no qualms about stealing from the naïve girl he has taken a liking to. Their villainy, if we could call it that, is not lingered on for long because circumstances have dictated their behavior. They may be likable people but that cannot keep them from committing bad deeds, even if the people they stand to hurt are related by heart or worse, by blood.
In its third act, Thithi is at its busiest. Threads need to be tied up, stories need to be concluded. It’s a bit overwhelming to keep track of everything, and in some places it feels like too much is happening. But till its pensive final shot, it remains both playful and thoughtful. In pitch darkness, the righteous old inebriate who has infuriated his son by unknowingly spoiling the land deal sits in front of a fire, away from the ceremony now in its last stage. The village readies itself for a performance. He doesn’t want to join in the fun. He would much rather light a fire in the darkness.
(Not For Reproduction)
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