Where to Watch:
9/10
FilmFascination Rating
I am genuinely proud that a film like this is coming out of India.
This is one of those films so confident in its craft that it doesn’t need to explain itself. Gondhal trusts its audience, trusts its setting, and trusts the slow build of dread.
Gondhal is a sacred ritual practised in rural India, performed for a newly wed couple. Villagers believe it removes the troubles that might follow their married life, clearing the path with the blessing of the God. The entire film is built around one such ritual, and almost all of it takes place over a single night.
The couple at the centre is Suman and Andya. Suman is a beautiful young woman who has just married Andya, a seemingly innocent and apparently impotent man, and moved into his village. She isn’t entirely happy about it. Sarjerao, the son of the richest man in the village, had once proposed to her, but her family couldn’t meet the dowry his family demanded, and the proposal fell through. Now she is in the same village, married to someone else, and Sarjerao has not stopped looking at her. That’s all you need to know going in, and I’d rather you didn’t know more.
Gondhal opens with a masterclass in storytelling. We are dropped into the village at night as Tatya heads, with his grandson, to orchestrate the Gondhal for Andya. A bit of village gossip between Tatya and a few villagers tells us everything we need to know about most of the characters, without a single line of clumsy exposition. Then comes the part everyone will talk about: a 25-minute single take, one of the most impressive pieces of direction I’ve seen in cinema. The camera tracks through the entire gathering, across conversations and across characters of every age, and gives us the full geography of the place where most of the film will unfold. By the end of it, you aren’t watching the village. You are in it, attending the Gondhal like any other villager. It reminded me of what Kurosawa did in the first half hour of The Bad Sleep Well: before you realise it, you’ve become part of this new world.
The film is also technically excellent beyond that one shot. Most of it takes place at night around the ritual, and the lighting and atmosphere do a huge amount of work. We sit among the villagers, walk beside them, and get a front-row seat to the tradition. At the same time, we overhear whispers in rooms where no one else knows what is being said. That double view, the public ritual and the private plotting, is what keeps the tension alive.
What I liked most is how the film keeps shifting our emotions through changes of perspective. The first half is mostly about getting to know each character, and about the anticipation that something bad is going to happen. I’ll be honest: the pace here is a little slow. But the dread of the tragedy coming carries you through, and it makes the wait feel deliberate instead of empty. The first half ends on a twist you may very well see coming. The second half then moves at a completely different speed. The Gondhal finds its rhythm, and the film becomes thrillingly enjoyable, because it goes in the direction I had been wanting it to go from the very beginning.
You can feel the influence of world cinema in its style of shots and scenes – but that seems acceptable in a sense for a movie that also has its own personality. The control over the audience, the atmosphere, the character building, and a plot that is well executed from start to finish are what make it special.
One piece of advice: don’t read too much about this film before you watch it. It works best when you walk into that village not knowing who to trust.
Now, shall we go into the spoilers?
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In the first half, I was shit scared about Suman’s intentions. I felt awful for Andya, who looked like such an innocent guy. He had got a beautiful wife and was now facing collateral damage from problems that were never his. Meanwhile, Suman wouldn’t stop flirting with Sarjerao, a loose cannon who would do anything to get her.
I watched the film with friends during its re-release a few weeks back, and by the interval our conclusion was clear: something wasn’t as it seemed. Either Suman was doing something with good intentions for her husband, or someone else wasn’t what they appeared to be. Our strong guess was Andya.
The second half changes everything. Suman’s intentions become clear: she wants to leave with her boyfriend. But she can’t simply run away, because the villagers would eventually find them and kill them. She needs a plan that gets her out cleanly. And the plan is viable: flirt with Sarjerao and push him into killing Andya. It might even have worked, if not for the bodies that start dropping completely unexpectedly.
One small character moment I loved is when Sarjerao kills his own father. The father isn’t angry or sad. He accepts it as a rational decision to keep power in the family, and even seems proud, assured that his son will make a worthy Patil, someone the whole village fears.
What’s even more unexpected is Sarjerao’s death. It’s slightly hard to believe that Tatya never looks at Sarjerao’s face. Or is he faking it when he tells Suman to find him? I don’t know. Why would he? Maybe he just never looks.
After that eventful night, the film knowingly postpones revealing whether Andya has died. I was damn sure he was alive. Killing him would have been a complete letdown, and that was easy to see coming. The more interesting question is how Andya knew someone was coming for him. The detail I keep coming back to is the morning shot of him sitting with his grandmother. I like to think the grandmother was never as clueless as she appeared. When Suman and her boyfriend were discussing the murder, she wasn’t misunderstanding anything as she slept in that room. From what we’re told, Andya’s family once held power too. So when Suman brings her out and sits her beside Andya, she tells her grandson everything.
So was Andya always the clever one, or did the night change him? I like to believe he always was, and that the innocent facade was just that. One supporting scene being the one when he is alone with Suman – he immediately starts being intimate with her. In a way – the character he had portrayed till that moment wouldn’t have done that. The metaphorical hiding of the chicken just supports this further.
There’s also a quiet irony in the ritual itself. The Gondhal is meant to clear every trouble from a newly wed couple’s path. Instead, it becomes the cover under which all the trouble in this village comes to a head, and by morning, nearly everyone who stood in the couple’s way is dead. Whether you read that as God’s plan or as Andya’s, I’m not sure if the film wants us to decide.
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