The year has just begun but January is already staking a claim to being the cruellest month for Hindi cinema. Propaganda, jingoism and parochialism; aggression, conflicts and attacks; latent hostility and outright hatred — there’s a lot of negativity on screen in the overblown hagiographies and obsequious recreations of events from the recent past.
It has taken a bunch of children in a Marathi film called Dhappa to change the overriding narrative of belligerence and sectarianism, and underscore the spirit of camaraderie, inclusivity and harmony. The adults may have lost the plot but the kids are certainly alright.
Winner of the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration, Dhappa has been directed by Nipun Avinash Dharmadhikari and co-produced by two of the finest talents in Marathi cinema, filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni and actor Girish Kulkarni, who has also written the story and screenplay, inspired from a true incident.
The children in Dhappa don’t just feel real but Girish also makes their views shine through; and pivots the film on their perspective. “In India, we hardly have any films where children actually feel like children. It’s like the point-of-view of a grown-up has been imposed on the child’s psyche,” says Umesh.
Girish has managed the near impossible: he has penned a children’s film that steers clear of moral grandstanding and doesn’t talk down to them. It’s about children going on a journey of self-discovery all by themselves. In one of the film’s most resonating scenes, the father of a physically challenged child approves of him getting out of his bubble to confront the ugliness in the world. How else will he be able to test his own mettle?
Sweet and simple
‘Dhappa’ kicks off with delightful little childhood vignettes — the banter and bickering in the autorickshaw ride from school, the silly fights with the apartment grinch, playing cupid to a couple of lovestruck youngsters, and evading the clutches of the overzealous grandmother. Dhappa feels like a straight, sweet and simple slice of middle-class life, the kind we associate with the cinema of Sai Paranjape, Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee.
In fact, it seems as though there isn’t much else going on, until the apartment complex decides to stage a play on environment issues for Ganesh Chaturthi. A drama on trees that walk, a monkey that talks, and time-travel, it brings together Jesus Christ and Sant Tukaram as they break bread and bhaakri on stage, while chiding human beings for reducing earth to a disaster zone. The play riles the local politician/ goon, Bhau, who can’t digest the blurring of religious and cultural boundaries. The only way he can retort is through force and violence.How will the children counter him?
Dhappa may feel sentimental and cute in turns but it certainly isn’t shorn of profundity. “You need a child’s mind to understand complex issues,” says Umesh. It’s why the youngsters don’t find anything offensive about Christ being a part of the Ganesh festival.
The film is about the urgency to return to the simplicity and innocence of a child. Caste, class, and religious disparities may be all around but the children are able to rise above it all. They are the ones who hold a candle for tolerance. Therein lies much-needed subtlety and nuance.
The writer is Associate Editor-Cinema with The Hindu in Mumbai.
