Spoilers ahead…
The Partition saga Qissa (in Punjabi) is ostensibly about a woman who’s brought up as a man, but the film isn’t about gender identity at all. At least, not in the way we talk about it in these LGBTQ times. The director Anup Singh is after something looser, vaguer. His entire film seems to be an attempt to come to grips with limbo, that state of being where you’re neither in India nor in Pakistan, neither man nor woman, neither human nor ghost, neither gay nor straight, where a line on a map or a chromosome can suddenly change the way people perceive you, which, in turn, changes the way you see yourself. It may be no accident that the mirror – at times crusted with metaphorical grime, like the photograph in K Balachander’s Arangetram – is a recurrent image in the movie.
Most Partition-era tales go after the sadness of it all. Few set out to chart the madness – not the generalised insanity of mobs, but the literal madness of the times encapsulated in (and espied through) the madness of an individual. The best – and best-known – example of the latter kind of Partition saga is probably Manto’s Toba Tek Singh, which was actually set in a lunatic asylum, and in the movies, we’ve had Kamal Haasan’s Hey Ram!, whose deluded protagonist decided that the only way to get some sanity back into his life was to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi. Umber Singh (Irrfan Khan) opts for an easier solution. He just decides to think that his last-born girl (Kanwar, played as an adult by Tillotama Shome) is a boy.
A different kind of filmmaker might have thought it important to get into Umber Singh’s head, to explain why. But sometimes there are no whys. It just is. It may have something to do with the line about “defeating destiny.” It may not. We get the scene where Umber’s wife Meher (Tisca Chopra) delivers a baby girl and asks him if he won’t see the child. He says he’s seen enough girls. That’s about as much explanation we get about Umber’s decision to treat Kanwar as his “son.” He wants to believe this so desperately, it’s so important to him, that even when this “boy” comes to him at night with blood-stained pyjamas, he just remarks that his son is growing up. The scene is horrible to watch. Later, when Kanwar has been married off to Neeli (Rasika Duggal, who looks like a young Urmila Matondkar), the in-laws take the new bride to the local jewellery store. Umber buys something for her and then says he’ll buy her the whole shop when she has a son. It’s surreal. Irrfan Khan is incredible. He doesn’t produce the simple effect of making you hate him for what he’s doing to Kanwar. Watching him, you feel the kind of morbid fascination when you run into the scene of a really gruesome accident. Your eyes are drawn to him even as you know you want to flee.
The story Anup Singh wants to say is so delicate, so textured, and so unusual – at some point, it simply slips into magical realism, as if it were the most natural thing (and the cinematography is equally magical) – that the wrong cast would have killed it, or worse, made us hoot with laughter. After all, look at the things that happen. There’s a fire that wipes out someone just as Kanwar goes to find them. There’s the girl raised as a boy. There’s this “boy” being taught how to wrestle. There’s this “boy” facing the prospect of a wedding night. The people who write those melodramatic soaps on TV couldn’t come up with more bizarre twists. And yet, with this cast, nothing sticks out. It all comes together beautifully.
Shome may just be the most convincing man-played-by-a-woman. She’s small of build, so she doesn’t have to face the kind of eye-rolling we did in, say, Mera Naam Joker, when Padmini pretended to be a man. Shome looks like an adolescent, which, too, is a kind of limbo – between childhood and adulthood. Irrfan Khan looms over her, and in her scenes with him, she really looks like a little boy. And when she dresses up in girl clothes, Shome looks like a cross-dresser – it’s hard to remember her as the shy, delicate, utterly feminine Alice from Monsoon Wedding. This is the very definition of a performance.
The word “chilling” kept popping into my head. That dressing-up scene is chilling. Neeli tells Kanwar that she/he’s free now and can do whatever she/he wants, but Kanwar probably had it easier when the choice didn’t exist. At least under Umber, she/he knew what she/he had to do – be a man, above all. But now, when Kanwar wears those girl clothes, she/he feels like scorpions are all over her/his body. When Neeli covers Kanwar’s head with a dupatta, she/he can barely bring himself to look at the reflection in the mirror. Imagine knowing you’re A, but your father wants you to be B, and now you’re free to be A, but you’ve grown comfortable being B. As I said, it’s chilling.
Qissa is filled with moments that are so muted, they pass before you realise you should be weeping. Like the scene where Kanwar, from a discreet distance, watches Meher bathing. Or the one where Kanwar tells Meher how much she/he longed to sit down and talk with her, something that the family’s daughters had taken for granted. Or the one where Neeli, on her wedding night, and after realising that she’s been married off to a woman, asks Meher what she should do now. Meher replies, “Live as my daughter.” You’d laugh if the mood weren’t so sombre. It’s almost as if Meher has been yearning to replace the daughter that Umber took away from her, and now she’s grabbing the chance when it presents itself in this utterly fantastical situation. In her own way, Meher appears to be as mad as her husband.
KEY:
- the photograph in K Balachander’s Arangetram = see here, at the 1:36:26 mark
- when Padmini pretended to be a man = see here
- Alice from Monsoon Wedding = see here
Copyright ©2015 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Anu Warrier
February 25, 2015
Heard about this, but didn’t know what it was about. ‘Chilling’ is the right word. Thanks for the write-up. Goes on to my list of films-to-watch; now, if only I can source it somewhere.
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Di
February 25, 2015
How did a sambhar-idli eating madras understand all that punjabi? I watched it online a bit and the punjabi threw me off (even though I am from bordering state and I sort of understood what they were saying).
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Di
February 25, 2015
weakest sentence in this review, need to revisit:
Imagine knowing you’re A, but your father wants you to be B, and now you’re free to be A, but you’ve grown comfortable being B.
😦
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jerinasriram
February 26, 2015
Wrote a long comment but lost it while trying to log in. Argh. I guess what I had wanted to say was that many things didn’t work for me with this movie. I came back feeling a bit cheated. I got the impression that the movie was trying to be pretentiously arty. The title was misleading. If it indeed were the story of a lonely ghost as the title suggested, then there should have been an attempt to let us into Umber ‘s head. Instead we get to see Kunwar’ s angst.
Many things are only scratched at the surface. Kunwar’s dilemma, the mother’s angst, the sister’s jealousy (?) and fear of their father, Neeli’s anger/disappointment (after all she is young and could be ruled by her hormones), even the lesbian angle is hardly dealt with (Neeli’s saying that she couldn’t believe she fell in love with a girl) and the switch of the bodies or is that identities(?) in the end.
Perhaps this is what one would expect from an arty movie…which is something like an abstract painting. The viewer is perhaps expected to derive their own meaning from it. And here I felt exactly like the art challenged viewer – puzzled and rather unsatisfied, but most importantly a bit dumb for not getting ‘it’. Duh!
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Rahini David
February 26, 2015
Di: What is wrong with that sentence? Gramatical? It appears just fine.
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Garima
February 27, 2015
While I really liked the movie, I found the change in tone a bit jarring. This is how I explained this to myself:
The taking over was not possession but a full acceptance of delusion. At this point, Kunwar fully and irrevocably believes what Umber did. I will call the resultant personality Kumber for ease of reference.
Here is the rub, why do the villagers flee when Kumber approaches and removes his shirt? Either they see a man which doesn’t sit with the theory or they see a partly naked woman and are embarrassed, either way, they question the uncle involving them in something like this. But if it were a woman, the reaction should be stronger and in line with the baying for blood scenes.
Neeli kills herself because she can’t deal with Kumber.
The reason why the ghost grows old is, it is really Kumber and not Kunwar possessed by a spirit. The going back to the well scene is symbolic of Kumber being in a perpetual state of guilt and thinking back to where this all started. But why would Kumber go to well and not the hut thing where he locked up Neeli. My answer is symbolism – but for whom. May be the movie is trying to involve the viewer this way or trying to be more inaccessible (and pretentious – I am trying hard not to take this theory very seriously).
This makes more sense to me since if it really were (believing magic realism instead of symbolism) Umber, his guilt would focus more on his family and Kunwar, along with Neeli – all innocent victims. For Kumber though, Neeli is the one he had actively wronged.
TL; DR: symbolism instead of magic realism but a few unanswered questions.
It does make you think and that never is a bad thing.
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Di
February 28, 2015
Rahini: it sounds ok as a conversation piece but not as part of movie review. I guess I am used to intellectual Ranjan 🙂
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brangan
February 28, 2015
Garima: That was an excellent comment. Thank you.
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Justin Rao
March 1, 2015
Just like the mirror, I found the house to be a motif.
There’s a strong sense to be at home, to find their lost land. Qissa, just like Singh’s debut film, The Name Of A River begins inside a home. In The Name of a River they are going to a new home, after partition, through river.In Qissa, we see Umber Singh come to India after partition in search of a better home. They settle in a new house. Kanwar gets married and we see the house again.
When the films crucial turning point comes, it is in the vicinity of a house and the house is always in the backdrop. Kanwar and Neeli move to a new house, their old house has been ruined. In the end, we see the house again.
The house becomes a metaphor for peace. It is the stability the characters are looking for.
The prominence of a home hints at Ritwik Ghatak’s movies too, where home, the land, was an important factor. Like a character describes in The Name Of A River, home becomes image of monumental suffering in Meghe Dhaka Tara and the same home becomes a lie in Subararekha.
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Saraah Kabir
March 10, 2015
I have watched this movie online but non seems to have english subtitles…..its difficult to understand. Any idea whr i can get to see it online with english subtitles?
Thnx
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Arsaib (@Arsaib4)
March 14, 2015
@Saraah: I’m not sure if this entirely solves your problem, but you can download the subtitles from this site (.srt file):
http://moviesubtitles.me/qissa-the-tale-of-a-lonely-ghost-2013-english-subtitles-download
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Saraah Kabir
March 14, 2015
@Arsaib Thank u Arsaib…..watched the movie with subtitles…. thank u so much
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Saraah Kabir
March 14, 2015
The movie went on well with me…impressive….until the possession thingy…..umber back from the dead….. no wonder they showed neeli taking off from the balcony…. how could she live with the one who wanted to rape her….Gosh!
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Saraah Kabir
March 14, 2015
@jerinasriram…. exact thoughts of mine which you have pened down…. i agree 100% with every word! Yes…. “art challenged viewer” is the right word.
Neeli tryin to escape with the loot was one scene that i had to laugh at but then again u remember umber saying ” will buy you the whole shop after you give birth to a son” ..he had rape..impregnation in his twisted mind already…. 😦
The movie does haunt one long after its seen. I feel the cast have done justice to thr roles and the directr has won hearts. I loved the cast and the sets…teleported back to the post colonial era.
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Mohit
March 30, 2015
Intriguing film indeed, but did you find the latter portions convincing, such as the portions where the wife (Rasika Duggal) discovers that her husband is a woman but decides to stick together; or the magic realism bits when the boundaries between father-son/daughter, body-soul are blurred? I probably need a rewatch, but I felt the film uses the magic realism device as a cop-out, wished several things were fleshed out better. Your thoughts?
PS: Coincidentally, only a couple of days after seeing the film, I stumbled upon this bit on Nathuram Godse’s wiki page:
“Nathuram was given his name because of an unfortunate incident. Before he was born, his parents had three sons and a daughter, with all three boys dying in their infancy. Fearing a curse that targeted male children, young Ramachandra was brought up as a girl for the first few years of his life, including having his nose pierced and being made to wear a nose-ring (nath in Marathi). It was then that he earned the nickname “Nathuram” (literally “Ram with a nose-ring”). After his younger brother was born, they switched to treating him as a boy.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathuram_Godse
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Bayta
February 27, 2016
I’ve been meaning to watch this movie ever since BR linked me to this review in another comments thread, but never got around to it. Just found out that it’s actually being screened in Chennai next week as part of a NFDC Cinemas of India Showcase, so thought I’d share the link in case anyone else is interested in it as well – https://www.facebook.com/Chennaifilmfest/posts/1066582360064614
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