The Indian auteur delivers a stunning and beguiling feature
Nothing about The Bait is given to the audience easily. The heavy subject matter of the film is somewhat softened and balanced but the surreal settings, the gorgeousness of the images, and the deceptively casual narrative style.
Director Buddhadep Dasgupta is a master of using his shot structures for expressive purposes. His framings and camera movements reveal the emotional depth hiding in his lush landscapes and add layers to a story that seems all too simple on the surface. Approaching his film like a fable, Dasgupta focuses on three semi-surreal main characters all residing in the same part of the Indian countryside. The first is a mailman, Goja, who climbed into a tree full of monkeys one day with his bag of mail and refused to come back down. The second is a young girl, Munni, of about ten or twelve years old who dresses in traditional Indian garb and travels from village to village with her parents, walking a tightrope to earn money. The third is a Raja who goes tiger-hunting and is still regarded by local villagers as a king despite his lack of any real status in modern India.
Separately, these three disjointed stories each contain their own clues the film’s overall meaning. Each storyline feels connected to the past at varying degrees. Munni’s parents take a remarkably cavalier attitude toward their entire source of income stemming from basically pimping out their daughter as a circus performer and talk about marrying her off soon despite her young age. Theirs seems to be the narrative branch most rooted in traditional India. Meanwhile, the Raja desperately tries to hang on to his royal ancestry, drawing a documentary film crew with him into the jungle on the promise of a tiger hunt but never actually encountering a tiger. Embarrassed and married to a woman who is utterly disenchanted with him, the Raja is a man desperately trying to hold on to a past that no longer exists. Meanwhile, Goja actively runs away from modern life by hiding in a tree and giving out advice to those who wander by.
Dasgupta’s attitude throughout the film is relatively lighthearted and often comical. When they do come, the deeper moments stand in such contrast to casual attitude of the rest of the film that one can almost miss the message being imparted. There’s a moment where Goja sits in his tree gazing out at a stunning savannah and a color-streaked sky and he claims that he can’t keep delivering letters because he’s read the news in all of them and it’s bad news that would only make people sad.
At long last, in the film’s third act, the three stories converge in more than just tangential ways. Throughout the film, certain scenes involve characters reacting to the roar of a distant tiger, but the animal itself is never actually seen. In the final moments, a sinister twist of fate reveals what’s being used as the literal bait for the tiger hunt. The sudden seriousness of the visually gorgeous ending destroys the false lightheartedness developed throughout the rest of the film.
Dasgupta’s mastery comes from how richly layered his film is. From a woman’s recurring dream about a man emerging from a lake to an old-fashioned gramophone to a traditional Indian idol, the fable is rich with imagery and symbolism that will tug at one’s brain for weeks after the credits roll.
The Bait had its world premiere at 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. It was directed by Buddhadep Dasgupta and produced by Pawan Kanodia.
Audiences in New York can see the film next week at Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and The India Center Foundation’s India Kaleidoscope taking place December 8 through 11. It is an exciting new festival that will present film lovers with a chance to immerse themselves in the unique sights and sounds that make up the Indian regional, independent film landscape. For more information visit here: movingimage.us/india-
Photo credits: TIFF
