With the current popularity of streaming platforms, Indian cinema, especially that extending beyond Bollywood, has gained recognition and accessible representation. With this, freedom has been offered to creators and consumers alike, to explore genres of content otherwise absent from the mainstream. Exploring such content, Platform brings a list of some films in regional languages available to stream on major OTTs, which promise to divulge the full spectrum of human relationships.
Shonar Pahar
Directed by Parambrata Chattopadhyay, this Bengali-language film cuts across the barrier of age to present the bond of an elderly woman and a young child. Being a young mother, Upama would string together worlds of fantasy for her son, until the two grew apart with the tide of time. Now an ageing mother, estranged from her son, she battles with feelings of loss and loneliness, only till she encounters seven-year-old Bitlu, who had been orphaned at birth. Desires, imaginations and dreams criss-cross across the screen as the two hunt for love and treasure. Weaving words of fantasy, Upama and Bitlu embark upon a journey to uncover mysticism in their everyday, and find an end to an unfinished story. An emotionally heavy film, the script explores the two opposite spectrums of generational gap, where one end brims with callous neglect of the elderly and the other nurtures innocence in both parties.
Available to stream on Netflix
Gamak Ghar
Gamak Ghar is a tale of time. Births, deaths, the interim — how much does a single house witness? Carrying stories of generations, Gamak Ghar or ‘the village house’ is a character in itself. This gem of Indian cinema uses the language Maithili and is directed by Achal Mishra. Tracing the lives of a dynamically changing, expanding and evolving family, the life of their ancestral house in Darbhanga, Bihar, also becomes intertwined in the movie. Somewhere amidst mango groves, card games, feasts, carefree dances, chipping paint, mouldy walls and dilapidated windows, the house seems to grow old, changing with the changing characters of its inhabitants. As time passes, we painfully understand the cruelty of it, as time and the house, become central protagonists of this beautiful and exceptional film.
Available to stream on Mubi
The Great Indian Kitchen
Capturing the nuances of everyday life of most women in conservative patriarchal Indian households, The Great Indian Kitchen is a Malayalam-language film, directed by Jeo Baby. And it is the everyday-ness of the film that makes it all the more haunting. Confined to the kitchen, the wives of the house cater to the whims of the men, who in turn have little to no regard for their counterparts. Among the myriad layered scenes, the beauty of the film lies in the namelessness of the characters. Simply being referred to as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, the lack of a name strips the characters of an identity, thus making the film synonymous with every household. The viewer experiences the drudgery, monotony and moreover the helplessness of an unjust life through the confines of a grimy middle-class kitchen, slowly closing in on the characters and the audiences alike. The film, through its covert depictions of inequality, becomes a breakthrough narrative on the imperishable cycle of patriarchy.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video
JoJi
Joji, a Malayalam-language film based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is ultimately a film about the failure of an authoritarian father in maintaining the integrity of his family, as deep resentment and discontentment begin to breed under his rule. As in all crime-thrillers, self-fulfilment and money become motivating factors for the dictatorial father and his three seemingly aimless sons. When the father suffers a stroke and is half-paralysed, each member of the family has their own reason to celebrate and Joji, the youngest song, commits the perfect crime to suit his gains. Interspersed with dark humour and satire, this Dileesh Pothan film unravels the workings of the mind of a criminal. With a buildup of suspense, the gut-wrenchingly gruesome movie becomes reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, as it highlights the amorality of the lead character Joji. Dileesh Pothan examines the fall of a family, pushed over the edge by greed and malice, unable to ever be the same again.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime
Text Devyani Verma
Date 26-08-2021
