Releasing on Friday is actor Anushka Sharma’s production, Phillauri , about a female ghost who unwittingly gets married to a human being. Behind the facade of Sharma’s ghostly avatar in Phillauri , there’s something more — a constant sense of loss that steers the narrative forward — a cinematic trope that has been often used to depict supernatural characters who form relationships with humans.
Ghostly encounters
The 1959 classic from the Shaw Brothers studio (Shanghai) The Enchanting Shadow is the story of an optimistic scholar during the Qing dynasty, a volatile period of Chinese history. The scholar gets involved with a female spirit who is forced by a witch to seduce young men so that she can drink their blood. With the help of a Taoist swordsman he frees the spirit from her misery. Nominated for Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1960, the film had a somewhat tepid remake in The Enchanting Ghost (1970), but it was Tsui Hark’s A Chinese Ghost Story that sealed its popularity among cinephiles. Made in 1987, it follows the same premise more or less, but this time with more spunk in terms of romantic allusions. And it starred a number of A-listers like Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong. Two more successful sequels followed, while an animated version came out in 1997 followed by a remake in 2011. While the original followed the formation of the Qing dynasty, the 1987 remake alludes to the fraught relationship that Hong Kong had with both its then colonial ruler Great Britain and mainland China.
The same year (1987) saw the release of Spiritual Love , another supernatural romance, which starred Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Cheung in the lead roles. The Korean film Ghost in Love , meanwhile, followed a jealous girlfriend who becomes a ghost and stalks her lover. In the popular Thai movie Nang Nak (1999), a young soldier coming back from war finds himself living with the spirits of his dead wife and son. The wife, desperate to hold on to her husband, kills anyone who is in danger of telling him the truth. The film, is largely seen as a critical examination of free speech in the Buddhist nation, which has nearly 20 successful or attempted military coups to its credit.
Going West
Hollywood has explored various types of supernatural romances, that mostly involved romantic comedy, violence and tragedy. In Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) Alan Rickman’s character comes back as a spirit to comfort his partner and help her move on. The cult classic Ghost , which released in the same year, saw a dead Patrick Swayze trying to save his wife (Demi Moore), which was his salvation. Kiss Me Goodbye (1982) also has a husband (James Caan) coming back as a ghost, but this time to prevent his wife (Sally Field) from getting married to a man (Jeff Bridges) he can’t stand. But it is not always the husbands who come back as ghosts. Wives make it a point to visit their spouses too, like in the brilliant Blithe Spirit (1945), where Rex Harrison is harassed by the spirit of his first wife. The film, which also stars Margaret Rutherford as a medium, was directed by David Lean and was based on a play by Noel Coward.
Indian ghosts, male or female, have often been bound by the shackles of patriarchy. It is Raja Ugra Narayan’s (Pran) chauvinism and jealousy that seals the fate of the two lovers in Madhumati (1958). In Neel Kamal (1968), Raj Kumar’s soul is desperate to be reunited with his lover’s reincarnation played by Waheeda Rehman. The films Duvidha (1973) and Paheli (2005) are sensitive depictions of how patriarchy controls women both in life and death.
Vampire speak
Other supernatural entities like vampires are a constant source of romantic escapades thanks to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. In Gothic romances featuring vampires and other such entities, it was the forbidden that piqued the interest — laced with the joy of breaking a taboo — and the Victorian moral codes that were shattered. But mostly, the relationship between a human and a vampire has been depicted as symbiotic. As in the Swedish horror Let the Right One In (2008), the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a vampire child in a Stockholm suburb in the early 1980s. The same film was remade in Telugu as Moksha (2013), starring Meera Jasmine.
ROBERT PATTINSON and KRISTEN STEWART star in THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN-PART 2 Ph: Doane Gregory © 2011 Summit Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.
Park Chan Wook’s Thirst (2009) is about a priest turned vampire, his uncontrollable lust for blood and his friend’s wife making it a morally charged story. The David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon-starrer Hunger (1983) also depicts the symbiotic relationship between vampires. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) is about two vampire lovers fighting the changes society keeps imposing on them. And the 2013 film Warm Bodies is about zombies in love.
Angels and more
Akin to vampires, angels have taken up a large chunk of cinematic narratives. Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987) as well as Faraway So Close (1993) are treatises that closely observe a confluence between angels and humans meandering towards love. A very loose remake of Wenders’ film was the American City of Angels (1998) set in Los Angeles, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan as an angel and a doctor respectively.
Luc Besson’s Angel-A (2005) is about a guardian angel (Rie Rasmussen) who comes to help an out-of-luck human (Jamel Debbouze), something that another Shaw Brothers’ Production takes up in The Human Goddess (1972). The Bollywood movie Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic (2008) starring Rani Mukherji liberally borrows from Mary Poppins , while Chandramukhi (1993) starring Salman Khan and Sridevi relies on J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan , with Sridevi acting as Salman Khan’s guardian angel.
An oft-considered cult film, Mohini (1995), directed by Hema Malini had Madhoo playing a woman whose husband (Sudesh Berry) suspects she is not human, leading to trouble in their marriage. The film’s genesis can be traced back to Malayattoor Ramakrishnan’s Malayalam novel Yakshi (1967), which was first adapted for the big screen in 1968 and later became the premise for Malayalam films Akam (2013) and Yakshi, Faithfully Yours (2012).
