An old man and an old woman wait for death atop a cold, lonely mountain. Director Vinod Kapri chanced upon the story of Pyre in 2017 on a trek around his hometown Munsiyari in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region. "I saw this couple on top of a hill, grazing some 30-40 goats,” says Vinod. “That visual stayed with me.” He trekked uphill for an hour to reach them. "I asked them how it’s going. They sucked on their beedis and said 'We don't know. Indira Gandhi doesn't do anything.' That's when I realised that they have been cut-off from the world for too long."
The bigger worry, the old man told Vinod, was how to take his wife downhill incase she dies. The village was emptying out, with residents leaving for greener pastures of the cities. “The old man told me that he gifts a goat to anybody who helps them take his wife downhill for doctor visits,” says Vinod. “I asked him ‘What if one day the goats run out?’ ‘Hopefully our lives will run out before that,’ he answered.”
Pyre is a story of love and longing, of wait and wanting. It’s about a pahadi couple counting their last days as their neighbours are leaving for the plains. The only thing that is keeping them alive is that their son has sent a letter, promising to visit them. “For me, it is a heartwarming love story of an aging couple and their loneliness,” says Vinod.
The leads are played by first-time actors Padam Singh and Hira Devi. Vinod tells us that he had initially approached thespian couple Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah for the roles. “They read the script and quickly assented to it but then Naseer sahab developed a breathing ailment and the doctors advised him not to go on high altitudes," says Vinod. "I wanted my actors to be there, to interact with the space. Then, he only suggested that I should look for non-actors from the region.”
Vinod says that his only objective was to find a confident old man and an old woman, leaving the performance polishing to his acting coach. He found the male lead in his father’s cousin Padam Singh Kapri. “It was July 8, 2022, my dad’s 80th birthday and I had invited all his distant brothers and cousins for a celebration,” remembers Vinod. “This uncle of mine, who is now a retired army hawaldar, got drunk and summoned me. ‘I heard you are looking for an actor for your film?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you audition me?’ I asked if he even knew how a camera works. ‘Just tell me what to do,’ he said. I gave him a scene where he had to imagine his wife had died and he is calling out to the villagers for help. When he was done, everybody at the party clapped. I had found my actor.”
For the female lead, Vinod says, they were scouting hamlets near Munsiyari. “Our crew had crowded a village and everybody was curious as to what we were doing. It was evening and from a field downhill, a shrill voice asked in Kumaoni as to what the commotion was about,” says Vinod. “It was a frail, old woman. A young girl told her, ‘These guys have come from Bombay, they are looking for a heroine.’ The woman threw the heap of grass she was carrying on her head and said, ‘I am a heroine.’ I loved her confidence. I auditioned her and locked her in for the film.”
Finding the actors was one challenge, briefing them was another. “The scenes had a lot of pauses and in my experience even established actors like Om Puri and Ravi Kishan have trouble with them,” explains Vinod. “These people (the actors) could memorise the dialogues but they were missing the pauses. I had to tell them they are playing a couple who has been together for 65 years, they won’t reply to each other immediately. I asked the actors to mentally count till five before each dialogue.” Vinod also says that the actors often felt embarrassed about asking for retakes. “I told them even Akshay Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan take over 40 retakes sometimes. We would take 100 retakes if need be,” he says.
Taking non-actors from the region brought authenticity to the film but what Vinod lost out on was the selling push an established star cast would have given it. “An indie film based on an old couple in the mountains, it was impossible to sell this,” says Vinod. “It reminded me of my last release Pihu, nobody showed faith in that one also but then it opened at IFFI and I started getting calls from studios.”
We ask Vinod if for an indie filmmaker like him have OTTs been of any help, since they provide a wide platform for films that are hard theatrical sells. “It’s more difficult to get an indie film out on OTT,” he says. “If you have stars, they won’t even ask you for the film’s story. They just need more and more eyeballs,” says Vinod. “It’s a very sad situation. We have so many platforms but in a year only a handful of Hindi content is good. The only good Indian content on OTT is that of Malayalam cinema.”