Here is a short list of some of the constituent elements of the National Award winning Marathi film Fandry. A black sparrow. A trapped piglet. A makeshift kerosene lamp. A pair of jeans. A carrom board. Talcum powder. A broken bicycle. A village school with a painting of B R Ambedkar on its wall. A girl viewed from a distance. A sensitive boy, afraid of being mocked.
By themselves these things mean little, and all of them could have figured in the narrative of a much lesser film than this one. But their use here — how they accrue and add layers to our understanding of the central character — made Fandry one of the most powerful movie-watching experiences I have had in a while. Written and directed by Nagraj Manjule, this film is about a Big Subject — the evils of the caste system. But it doesn’t achieve its ends through lecture-baazi: it observes, focuses on minutiae and lets us into the lives and emotional states of its characters until the horror of a situation hits home. The protagonist, a boy named Jabya (Somnath Avghade), is portrayed with careful attention to detail, and so is everyone else in the story: Jabya’s family and friends; the scornful (or wary) upper-caste people in the village; the girl, Shalu, whom Jabya watches shyly, like a version of Gatsby staring at the green light.
Even the black pigs — a local menace, considered so filthy that a student must go home from school because she accidentally brushed against one — are an organic part of this setting, though their symbolic function seems obvious (this is very much a story about the dangers of being contaminated by someone’s touch).
Through a series of languid, slice-of-life scenes, we learn things in increments. The way Jabya uses his proper name (the imperial-sounding “Jambawant”) while signing a love letter to Shalu. How traumatised he is at the thought of having to join his family in catching pigs just outside the school, where his classmates might see him. His relationship with a man named Chanakya (played by Manjule himself), who could be an oddball living on society’s fringes or a savant who wants the boy to continue dreaming and hoping. At intervals, Jabya and a friend try to catch an unusual bird that lives around a tree in the wilderness just outside the village. They speak of the “need” to catch it and wonder if what they have heard about it is true. It isn’t until more than halfway through the film that we learn why this bird is so important to Jabya, and when the revelation comes it isn’t presented in big bold letters, it is simply dropped like a pebble in a lake — but the ripples travel a long way.
Other brilliantly observed sequences include one where a boy’s family comes to see Jabya’s elder sister, and a pointed but non-abrasive conversation takes place about the dowry required — with shots of the groom’s side whispering to each other, and our knowledge of how much hinges on their decision. I also liked the short scene where the family talks to each other while cutting wood from trees — it seems so homely and unremarkable until a man comes hollering at them from a distance and they scuttle off with the few pieces of wood they have stolen from his land. The film is getting us to know these people closely, to feel invested in their problems — but for a very brief instant we see them as this man does, as anonymous, nuisance-creating intruders. And this is done with economy and lightness of touch.
Ultimately, this is a film of vignettes, poetically woven together, and punctuated by a gentle music score that carries just the slightest hint of menace (a hint that a dam inside Jabya, as he struggles so hard to maintain his dignity, might burst some day). It is only at the end, with a Fourth Wall-demolishing last shot involving the hurling of a stone, that an explicit statement about injustice and discrimination is made. And the biggest compliment I can pay Fandry is to say that even though that hard-hitting final shot is just the thing to get an audience applauding as the screen darkens, I don’t think this film needed it. Everything that went before is so effective on its own terms. If you missed the theatrical run, the DVD is well worth waiting for.
Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer
