Tumbbad: Fear and Horror in Indian Cinema

Tumbbad, directed by Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad, is currently being showcased in the competition section at the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt (and also opened the 'Critics' Week' section at the Venice Film Festival), promising fresh talents in Indian cinema that, free from the controversies of Bollywood and the money-making machine, creates an engaging atmosphere and world that can blend a discerning audience with a mythical realm. Everything begins with rain and storms. A father narrates a mythical story to his son; an extremely strange tale that we quickly come to believe. We witness several parts of the main character's life: in the early 20th century, we encounter a child and his wild grandmother, who is kept in chains in a village called Tumbbad, but this grandmother knows the secret of a treasure and its location. When leaving, the boy promises his mother that he will never return to Tumbbad, but in the next episode, he returns and asks his grandmother about the treasure's secret, marking the beginning of a convoluted journey that leads this man into a terrifying labyrinth; a maze of greed. The film is highly narrative-driven and even has a moral conclusion, yet the filmmaker skillfully diminishes the moral aspect by creating a surreal, bizarre, and engaging narrative, reaching pure storytelling. The film's precise screenplay wastes no time, and every scene and every character's line serves a story that captivates the audience from the very first moment. The mythical aspect of the story breaks the boundaries of imagination and can add various layers to this simple tale about human greed. In fact, the film alienates its moral story: it does not judge or condemn its main character; it stands at a distance and, like an omniscient narrator—perhaps an old storytelling grandmother—invites us to listen to its tale without feeling compelled to judge. The storyteller knows no bounds and aims to shatter and collapse our boundaries of safety and comfort with an apocalyptic world. In some scenes, horror takes precedence, and the technique is so solid that the most unbelievable scenes, which could have turned out ridiculous, are intensely frightening. Among these scenes is one early in the film where we still know nothing about this terrifying grandmother, and the boy, left alone with her, approaches her in the greed for uncovering the treasure's secret, unaware that the grandmother has freed herself from chains and is waiting for him. The camera movements and the play of light and shadow create an atmosphere where the viewer feels they might become a victim of this witch; a woman whose voice we have only heard before, and in this scene, we see her extremely horrifying face for the first time. The gradual and drip-feed style of narration further excites the viewer to follow the not-so-likable character's fate. The film is not seeking to achieve empathy from the audience; we are merely observers; witnesses to a mad world in the first half of the 20th century in India, under the shadow of British presence and the struggle for independence, which perhaps connects to the film's mythical story about finding treasure. By the middle of the film, we only know that this man can retrieve a few gold coins from a place within an abandoned palace each time. A little further, we enter the belly of a goddess within this palace for the first time; a place extremely terrifying with a demonic figure pouring coins from its behind, but any encounter with it is an eternal curse; the same curse that the grandmother had suffered. Inside the goddess's belly, which occupies a significant part of the second half of the film, is a space perhaps inspired by the works of Anish Kapoor—a prominent British artist born in India—where there is no place for innocence, yet the greedy father has taken his son along with him. This confrontation of innocence with an apocalyptic world recalls the boy's first terrifying encounter with his grandmother at the beginning of the film. This time, however, the film aims to close the realm of evil forever, where the crying son's behavior with his now monstrous father brings applause from the audience.