Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Tiger’s Pond’ Review: A Restrained Indian Political Drama Set on the Edge of Spirituality
In Natesh Hegde’s “Tiger’s Pond,” an idyllic south Indian hamlet reveals treacherous political depths. However, despite its measured and deliberate vistas, the movie’s loosely tethered narrative comes undone. Its textures may be alluring, even haunting at times, but its restraint ultimately proves sanitizing when its story ought to feel more visceral, if only to capture the ghoulishness — the physical and emotional violence — lurking beneath its pristine surface.
Achyut Kumar plays Prabhu, a pitiless small-town businessman running for local office with the help of his right-hand enforcer, Malabari (Dileesh Pothan). Unbeknownst to them, the duo’s professional and personal entanglements have long been crisscrossed. Prabhu’s diligent younger brother Venkati (Natesh) plans to marry Malabari’s sister Devaki (Bindu Raxidi), but the caste inequity between their families is sure to eventually rear its head.
More from Variety
'After Dreaming' Review: A Hypnotic Portrait of an Armenian Existence Defined by War
India's Natesh Hegde Talks 'Tiger's Pond' Ahead of Berlin Premiere, Teaser Unveiled (EXCLUSIVE)
This impending personal implosion is just one of several parallel threads that never fully coalesce. At the same time, “Tiger’s Pond” is nominally about a nonverbal and possibly developmentally disabled maid, Pathi (Sumitra), who helps Prabhu and Venkati rear their cattle. When Pathi ends up pregnant after being sexually assaulted, Prabhu works to cover up the incident lest it stand in the way of his campaign. However, his plans are threatened by his new, idealistically political rival, the local worker Basu, played by Gopal Hedge, an actor whose appearance and soulful depth are distinctly Harry Dean Stanton-esque.
These interrelated tensions of class, caste and gender form a background tapestry, but its real politics are unveiled by Hegde’s visual and modal approach. Alongside cinematographer Vikas Urs and co-editor Paresh Kamdar, Hegde transforms the rural landscape of “Tiger’s Pond” into a realm adjacent to the spiritual. Its warm 16mm tones and texture feel plucked from an Indian “parallel” (or experimental regional) film from the 1980s. This approach goes hand-in-hand with a style of acting seldom seen in modern Indian cinema anymore: the kind that splits the difference between neorealism and melodrama, balancing measured naturalism alongside occasional bursts of energy and gesticulation when the story hits its peaks.
All the while, Hegde and Kamdar ensure that the camera lingers just long enough before cutting away, imbuing the frame with a sense of spiritual mystery each time the camera lands on a human face, or a religious statuette. The more Prabhu schemes while praying in temples or on river banks, the more his political aspirations begin to feel like a dharma — a religious duty or calling — rather than simply an ulterior motive beneath a religious façade.
This peculiar marriage of politics and religion speaks directly to the shape that right-wing fascism has taken in modern India of late, and by entwining these forces so intimately, Hegde’s conceptual approach becomes innately courageous, and mischievously innovative too. The film’s photographic, old-world quality is applied to a much more modern crime saga, the kind usually directed by seedy genre auteurs like Ram Gopal Verma or Anurag Kashyap (the latter of whom would eventually board “Tiger’s Pond” as a producer), as if to winkingly signal to the audience that these societal ills have been baked into the cultural fabric, since well before Kashyap’s camera found them.
On the flipside, these thematic concepts often supersede the movie’s drama. The former, while lucid, are often left wanting for a human anchor. It takes about a third of the runtime for the basic premise to fully materialize, until which point, latching onto any character (or even deciphering their relationships) becomes a task with little reward. Afterwards, major characters — especially Pathi, the film’s most intriguing fixture — slowly disappear from the screen without much further inquiry into their interiority, as even potentially gut-churning, violent reveals are relegated to mere implications.
Granted, there’s little danger of staying totally lost by the end of “Tiger Pond,” a work that is nothing if not theoretically unique. Whatever information the movie obscures, despite hinting toward with its imagery, it eventually lays out plainly in dialogue later on. Then again, a closer confluence between what’s depicted, and the revelation of its meaning, would’ve certainly yielded stronger and more visceral drama.
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
