'Vaghachipani' Movie Review: Natesh Hegde Helms a Quietly Chilling Chronicle of Rural Violence
In 'Vaghachipani,' which is the first Kannada-language film to premiere in the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival, the restraint of Hegde’s camerawork contrasts against, and amplifies, the violence of his characters.
Director: Natesh Hegde
Writer: Natesh Hegde
Cast: Dileesh Pothan, Achyut Kumar, Natesh, Gopal Hegde, Sumitra, Bindu Raxidi
Language: Kannada, Malayalam
There’s a line about a man who died of snakebite in Natesh Hegde’s Vaghachipani (Tiger’s Pond). It’s an offhand comment, but for anyone familiar with the filmmaker’s works — in which violence is always simmering just beneath the illusive serenity of rural life — this is when it really crystallises that no one is safe here, from either animal, or, as it turns out, their fellow man. This village is a nest of snakes. The Kannada writer-director’s 2021 film Pedro, a Busan International Film Festival selection, chronicled a meek farm worker whose mistake led him to be hunted, denied a voice, and cruelly punished. In introducing Pathi (Sumitra), a mute herder, in Vaghachipani, Hegde prompts us to question how much easier it is for the world to inflict cruelties upon someone who quite literally cannot speak. When Pathi’s voice finally breaks through the desolate night air towards the end, it’s chilling.
In Vaghachipani, which premiered in the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival, the restraint of Hegde’s camerawork contrasts against, and amplifies, the violence of his characters. Control is relative in this universe, in which various characters attempt to wrest it from each other, or regain some measure of it over their own lives.
Businessman Prabhu (Achyut Kumar) keeps his younger brother Venkati (Hegde) on a tight leash and has sway over the local police, but still has to plead for votes in the local election and still looks for signs of divine hand steering the course of his life. Venkati, on the other hand, is full of impotent rage, unable to exert dominance over even those he perceives as weaker. Prabhu’s right-hand man Malabari (Dileesh Pothan) has power by proxy, but he’s well aware that it’s power borrowed, not acquired. The company he keeps won’t change the destiny determined by his caste. The only person brave enough to stand up to Prabhu and attempt to thwart his plans is Basu (a grizzled, steely Gopal Hegde, far from his stooped-shouldered Pedro character). Information and context is pieced together slowly in this film, which lingers on the small details even as its characters harbour big plans.
Each of Vaghachipani’s characters chafe against their restraints — societal, familial, institutional. Though the film keeps returning to the motif of gambling, a game of chance, everyone’s fate seems tragically predetermined. Hegde’s long takes and stretches of silence evoke a stillness that’s reflective of the characters being held firmly in place. They are people who cannot hope for upward mobility or even to move forward. Pathi, especially, seems unsteady, perpetually waiting for someone to yank her out of her stupor. She wanders about though in a daze, the reason for which eventually becomes distressingly clear.
Often, however, the film’s stillness is deceptive. One shot simply tracks Prabhu snapping off a tree branch. The realisation of what he’s about to use it for hits you a split second before it’s revealed, the slowness retroactively transformed into an agonising buildup. Quiet footsteps on a tiled floor conjure up the sensation of a predator stalking its prey and a gradual pan then reveals where each is concealed; all this tension creates an almost-unbearable longing for a burst of action to puncture it.
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Other times, Hegde pushes the tension upfront. In one scene, Prabhu proposes to sing — any applause at the end will be taken as a signal that the listeners will vote for him. The song begins but he collapses into sobs before it’s over. There might have been a release of tension for him, but not viewers, still teetering on the unanswered question. The director’s style of filmmaking is unhurried — he stays with the characters as they travel, as they swim, as they attempt to fall asleep. “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out,” as Alfred Hitchock once said, but Hegde uses these ‘dull bits’ to disquieting effect. Through them, in the aftermath of a crime, the film forces you to confront just how ordinary the world can appear to everyone else even after your life has been shattered into a ‘before’ and ‘after,’ and how time could move the same for everyone else you’re standing still and unable to move on.
Some realisations are arrived at like a horror that builds gradually, then descends with a sickening thud. Other scenes of violence pierce through the narrative unexpectedly, like jagged pieces of glass. One scene muffles its sound, so only the blows reverberate.
Characters are often kept at a visual distance — filmed through doorways, atop a stairwell, or with the camera peering through foliage — though there’s an intimacy to how the film reveals their emotional depths. Hegde is fond of framing people as disembodied, with only their feet in view, or their arms, with their heads out of frame, mirroring a world that sees people as disposable, valued for what they can provide rather than who they are.
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The specificity and rootedness of the tale, based on the stories of Kannada writer Amaresh Nugadoni, make Vaghachipani authentic, but the frequent obscuring of the characters’ faces and their identities lends it a universality that makes it tragic. These people — the oppressors and the oppressed — are everywhere, this is a story that unfolds in more places than you think.
Our coverage of the Berlinale is made possible with the support of the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai.