'Jatadhara' Movie Review: Shoehorns Religion Into Science and Becomes the Butt of Its Own Joke

Films like Jatadhara try to collapse the distinction between religion and science using the vocabulary of “energy”—energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be neutralised; to generate positive energy mantras interact with idols; to neutralise negative energy, surround it with idols. The poor film is so convinced about its withering logic, it keeps unraveling, like a hallucinating AI model, trying to pull in names of real temples like the Padmanabhaswamy Temple, to give the film a “based on true events” chilly sheen.

But its religion is so scientifically worded and its science is so religiously coded, by the time the distinction between them collapses, they have stopped being themselves. When the Tesla coil is explained using the Arunachalesvara Temple’s lingam, the film has bared its inferiority complex so brazenly, you almost pity its pulpit. Faith operates on its own logic, perhaps, even an anti-logic. It is why faith is so much more amenable to awe, to affect, to epiphany. By shoehorning religion into science, from fear of not being taken seriously, Jatadhara has sucked dry the juice of faith itself, and become the butt of its own joke.

“I’m a ghost hunter who doesn’t believe in ghosts,” Shiva (Sudheer Babu) introduces himself, thinking it is witty and cool, an introduction that will hook people’s curiosity, and that is precisely how the archeologist in the half sari, Sitara (Divya Khossla), gets lassoed in. Why half sari with a puffed blouse? Because Telugu cinema loves a woman stuck in eternal adolescence and arrested development. Pigtail plaits are the only thing missing to make the icky fantasy with her wide eyed innocence come alive.

Shiva doesn’t believe in ghosts, because he notes, what exists is fear. When asked about the various threads on his wrist, if those, too, are a manifestation of fear, he says no, it is faith, “aastha”. Can faith be fear? This is a question the film steers clear of. It loves the scientific and clinical awe and CGI spectacle of faith, instead, with the unfortunate image of Shiva—the god—blown up into looking like a giant, with Shiva—the character—so small, his head reaches the god’s crotch.

Sitara crosses Shiva’s path when he is in a ruin to prove there is no ghost there—he has a device that has a safe-meter which says “Safe!” when there are no ghostly presences and “Unsafe!” when there are ghostly presences; he asks the ghosts to blink once for no, and blink twice for yes, because ghosts are famously known for being obedient. Sitara is there to steal an idol from the ruin—because, obviously, that is what an archeologist does. When she thinks he is there to threaten her to leave, she sprays his face with what feels like perfume, but what should have been pepper spray—but I don’t think this film is capable of creating a world where women feel the fear of being alone in cruel places and plan accordingly.

Why I am fixating on the spray is that the film lacks a sense of responding to a world—her spraying is so lackluster and Shiva’s response is so delayed and muted, it feels like, maybe, a sneeze of water. This sense of lacking “impact” trails the film. When Shiva’s father is supposed to fall from a rickety stool, we see the ricketing and we see the having-fallen. When a gas stove is burst open, we see the click of the gas lighter, and the aftermath. When a tree next to Shiva catches fire, he steps aside as though giving space for someone to walk past.

This problem becomes more severe as the film attempts to become more gruesome—when Shiva’s ghost hunting device begins to read “Unsafe!” and he has to reconsider his clarity. There is a Dhan Pisachini (Sonakshi Sinha) who is guarding pots of gold, and has been unleashed on the world now. She is also connected to Shiva, which is explained in a laborious flashback.

The Dhan Pisachini is sated only by the blood of sacrifices—animals, humans. We see her holding a bowl. We see her put the bowl to her mouth. We see nothing being poured into her mouth. Once, she smudges the red from her face, to convince us that, truly, she is gruesome, and sips blood like matcha. Sinha has to bare her teeth and pull her tongue out and make violent sounds. She has to chatter her teeth, but the teeth chattering’s dub is so much more frequent and vigorous that Sinha’s actual chattering, it feels like another sound has overlaid another image.

Even the fights don’t have the sense of the body being put through trauma. When the body’s presence is palpable is when Shiva is holding the lingams, his biceps flexed, the veins popping from his shoulders, doing it one at a time, to maximise time spent shirtless, while the Pisachini ogles at him, with a blood lust that, in a juicier movie, might have been a ghostly sexual awakening—at least someone should be having fun.