Old age can be brutal, and we can never be prepared enough to face it. On one hand, we console ourselves with labels like ‘sixty is the new forty’. On the other, we’re constantly checking our health insurance coverage and retirement plans. Director Vinod Kapri’s Kumaoni film Pyre (Chita) is not about a generation that is ready to age. It is about an octogenarian shepherd couple, Padam Singh and Tulsi, living at the farthest reaches of civilisation, with their days numbered and no heir in sight.
Pyre is a more difficult concept to digest than it is to understand as a film. Two lonely elders, with plenty of time to pass and precious little time left to live, find themselves surrounded by uncertainty in their dilapidated hilltop home. Medical care is a long trek away, and monetary transactions often take the form of goats. As much as the village admires the couple, the younger generation dreams of leaving for better prospects, while the elders wait for their turn to come.
Uncertainty, however, is hardly new to them. They have spent 28 years waiting for their son, Hariya, who never returned after moving to Bombay. It isn’t as if they are waiting for someone to take over their flock. The couple sees themselves as people who have become inconsequential. They are the remnants of a generation that barely figures in the political calculus of a country obsessed with its vote banks.
Kapri’s film is wonderful in the intimacy it captures between Padam Singh and Tulsi. Their squabbles make you wish for a partner, even as everything else around them makes you hope you never have to endure the same circumstances. Their relationship hasn’t rusted one bit after nearly seven decades together. Even amid a health scare, Tulsi worries about who will cook for Padam Singh. He, on the other hand, would trade any number of goats to make those increasingly frequent trips to the valley for his wife’s medical emergencies.
They may never have expressed the depth of their love for each other in words, but it is always there, in their endless conversations, petty disagreements and instinctive concern for one another.
Pyre is, in a way, an unusual love story. Before you realise it, it also becomes a story of sacrifice and of preparing to meet one’s end. Kapri’s screenplay repeatedly teases us with the possibility of an impending twist. Yet, even as we recognise the familiar cinematic device at work, we remain invested in what will unfold. Through all the back-and-forth, what emerges is a poignant portrait of two people who, despite their own vulnerability, wish nothing but the best for each other.
Minimal in its embellishments, Pyre is gorgeously lit and shot by Manas Bhattacharyya. The aerial shots capture the breathtaking beauty of the mountains, while also conveying the isolation of those who inhabit them. Musicians Mychael Danna and Amritha Vaz lend the film an evocative soundscape that captures both the region’s distinct identity and the tenderness of the couple’s bond.
The middle stretch does lose a little balance in pacing, as the film’s deliberate quiet occasionally drifts into slight inertia. Yet this is a minor note in an otherwise assured work. Pyre gets under your skin without pushing. You can sense where the story is going, yet the ending still hits hard. Much of that comes from Padam Singh and Hira Devi. They’re not trained actors, and that’s exactly why they feel so true. The supporting cast, led by Sadab Khan, Shubham Chaudhary and Subhash Chandra, is equally convincing. Their performances are so deeply rooted in the milieu that it becomes difficult to believe the world on screen is fictional.
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By the time Pyre ends, you’re left with a heavy lump in your throat. Old age and loneliness aren’t new subjects, but Kapri puts them somewhere most films don’t bother looking: inside a system that has little use for people once they stop being productive. There’s something quietly brutal about a world that keeps celebrating longer lives without ever asking what kind of life is actually waiting for those who reach them.
Pyre doesn’t sit there feeling sorry for two forgotten old people. It also shows that family isn’t only blood, and that two people can still care for each other even after the rest of the world has moved on. In Padam Singh and Tulsi’s devotion to each other lies the film’s most heartbreaking truth: when the world has little left to offer you, having someone who refuses to stop caring can mean everything.
VERDICT: ★★★★
Read the reviews of Pyre by the Film Critics Guild HERE.
