A subtle and sweet study of grief
New Delhi:
In his second venture, hold on (Inheritance), Prashant Vijay tiptoes gently and wordlessly into the inner world of a girl dealing with her mother’s untimely death. The result is a subtle, sweet study of grief and its aftermath.
The independent Malayalam-language film is a sharp departure from the conventions of the coming-of-age genre. It uses the kind of muted and nuanced narrative approach that characterized the director’s critically acclaimed 2017 debut, Miracle Summer.
Scripted by Indu Lakshmi (who wrote and directed Neela), the life-long drama had its world premiere this week at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023 and is part of the Malayalam Cinema Today strand of the upcoming 28th International Film Festival. of Kerala.
hold onWhich greatly benefits from the director’s steadfast avoidance of simplistic storytelling, high school student Kalyani (a surprisingly effective Athira Rajeev) and her engineer-father Vijayaraghavan “Raghu” Nair (Pradeep Gidha) are at home after the latter’s death. 42 year old wife.
Before they leave, the relatives remind Raghu and Kalyani about the importance of ceremonies and rituals. Raghu has no patience for rituals but society has its way. But once the religious rituals are over, fathers and daughters begin the difficult and more necessary process of adjusting to life without the glue that holds the family together.
Kalyani is told that her mother died on an inauspicious day and therefore, all her belongings must be burnt so that no more misfortune befalls the family. The girl manages to save a recipe notebook that contains the secrets of the delightful dishes that the dead lady whipped up. His Ghee Payasam was to die for.
Will Kalyani follow in her mother’s footsteps and give her cooking skills a new lease of life? Or will the girl find a way to chart her own path? Foolscap is a blank page in the recipe book and the man she looks up to – her father, a progressive idealist and a government official with a penchant for language and poetry – hold the key to how life will turn out for her.
An aunt stops Kalyani from performing her mother’s last rites because she is menstruating. His father puts his foot down but finally gives in. And this is not the only time that Raghu will disappoint Kalyani.
Prashant Vijay’s consistently low-key approach to spelling out the inner dynamics of Kalyani’s world ensures that nothing is overtly verbalized. Everything that unfolds around her and her father, whose love of literature instills Kalyani in Kumaran Asan’s poems rather than nursery rhymes, is depicted largely in indirect ways rather than conveying words and gestures.
Raghur’s bookshelf has many copies of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali. This is her favorite book to give as a gift. After she reveals this fact to a friend, Kalyani plays a video recording of her father reciting ‘Song Ansang’ and herself, and then her mother, singing the Tagore lines translated into Malayalam.
Their lives appear in poetry. But the reference to a ghostly ditty that remains unknown could be interpreted as a metaphor for the life of a woman who didn’t get her due. Will his daughter now have the same fate?
Kalyani’s self-realization is fueled as much by grief as by disillusionment, but the changes she undergoes are entirely internal. Her empowerment occurs within her and manifests itself in a final ‘act’ that is a quiet decision rather than a loud declaration or rebellious cry.
An ultra-conservative aunt (Rini Udayakumar), who doesn’t deviate from tradition, an aggressive, alcoholic maternal uncle (Bala Shankar) who spells trouble, and a female colleague of her father’s (Ranjini George) who helps Kalyani open her eyes to the reality of grief. Makes matters worse for the girl.
In a society that is more intent on enforcing its dogma than alleviating a girl’s suffering, Kalyani seeks refuge in her mother’s recipe notebook, the only article of hope she manages to salvage. The truth about her father, a man she idolizes with seemingly good reason, makes her existence even more unsettling.
In Miracle SummerThe protagonist was a nine-year-old boy obsessed with the idea of disappearing. Kalyani is a few years older. The crisis in his life is therefore anything other than the child’s fancy outcome. Her world is in danger of falling apart after the death of a parent who meant the world to her but she must cling to who she is and, just as importantly, who she wants to be.
Kalyani must understand the intricacies of the adult world in order to step into it and overcome the setbacks that come with knowing what lies ahead in a girl’s life in a patriarchal environment. It’s a world where men believe they call the shots but are forced to hide themselves for fear of being found out.
The beauty – and the power – of it hold on Kalyani’s gradual transformation emerges from the brief description as the world creeps up on her and a recipe book inherited from her mother reveals to her the need to understand what falls between the lines and what the dead woman left undiscovered.
hold on A gentle song of the unsung song and its echoes in the life of a girl looking for a voice to express her aspirations.
