Gondhal Movie Review
Debutant director Santosh Davakhar’s Gondhal is a compelling, albeit somewhat familiar, story of love, lust, betrayal, and patriarchy with Shakespearean dynamics. The story is set in a village that celebrates the recent marriage of Suman (Ishita Deshmukh) and Ananda (Yogesh Sohoni) with a religious ceremony, a mix of performance art and folk ritual, called Gondhal. The villagers believe that the ritual summons up deities, blessing the couple and eliminating any potential hardships and evil influences from them.
With Gondhal, Santosh poses a potent and provocative question: Do religious rituals solve any problem in society if the people who perform these are full of malice themselves? The brilliance of the film lies in its uncompromising treatment and decidedly ambiguous climax, where the performative nature of the ceremony mirrors all the shenanigans around it to create a disorienting effect. The film is not perfect, but the climax makes you wonder whether the almighty has had the final say or the mere mortals have had an awakening, continuing the cycle of violence. Santosh Davakhar cleverly leaves it open, eschewing easy resolutions and making the audience think deeply about the implications of the story.
Director: Santosh Davakhar
Cast: Ishita Deshmukh, Yogesh Sohoni, Nishad Bhoir
Music and visuals play an important part in Santosh’s film, which works better as an experiment with form and texture than as a drama with fully fleshed out character arcs. In fact, most characters function as archetypes, although Santosh’s film puts a refreshing spin on some of them. Take the female protagonist, Suman, for example. Despite a patriarchal upbringing, she is a boisterous woman with a way with words who does not fear expressing her opinion in front of anyone and who commands fierce agency. A lesser film would have treated her as just another victim of patriarchy, but Gondhal celebrates Suman by portraying her as a powerful character with characteristics similar to a femme fatale.
It is an absolute delight to see how Suman teases and even talks down to Sarjerao (Nishad Bhoir), the heir to a village chief named Patil (Suresh Vishwakarma). At the same time, Santosh Davakhar’s film shows the harsh realities of her life with conservative parents. At one point, her father (Sharad Jadhav) tells her not to loiter around the village and cozy up with men who often sneer at women and make sexually inappropriate comments to them. The old man’s concerns do not come from a place of care but rather conservatism. “I should have killed you the moment you were born,” the father tells his daughter, hinting at his brutal orthodoxy.
Then again, nobody in Gondhal is a pure soul. Even a small boy (Dhruv Thoke) harbours a strong sense of vendetta against one of the most powerful people in the village. He is too young to have such malice, but Santosh’s film effectively illustrates how an environment steeped in toxicity accelerates the loss of innocence. Even when something really brutal happens to him, the boy remains nonchalant, as if to say he is no stranger to such events.
If Gondhal falters anywhere, it is in its character-establishing portions involving Patil. Santosh leans too heavily on redundant scenes to establish Patil's influence. This feels unnecessary because a brilliant sequence featuring an indirect dig at him within the ritual art already captures the man’s power, in addition to Suresh Vishwakarma's commanding screen presence. The sequence involving Patil and his son comes suddenly out of the screenplay, depriving it of its impact. Arguably, the writing fails to sufficiently justify the actions of Murali and even Sarjerao, which feel rushed. It is understandable why they commit these deeds, but a layered film such as Gondhal deserves more intricacy on this front.
Then again, these are minor quibbles in a film that gets a lot right, from Amalendu Chaudhary’s cinematography that helps establish the village as a hotbed of superstition and violence to the music, including Ilaiyaraaja’s song and background score, and the performances. Gondhal exemplifies how the legendary composer helps build narrative tension with restraint in the score, avoiding intrusive loudness while deepening character texture. Additionally, the ritual percussion tracks play a crucial role, weaving clever subtext into the narrative. The brilliant performers in the film, including a scene-stealing Ishita Deshmukh, also inhabit all its layers with aplomb, making Gondhal a haunting cinematic experience that stays with you long after the credits roll.