Tumbbad : Novel and Elegant

Tumbbad is story readers delight. For someone who reads a lot of stories or someone like me who watches a lot of stories, the perfection in the structure of the movie is pure pleasure. Mysteries are best when peeled layer by layer and still manage to have that one last surprise shift at the end. Tumbbad is delightful.

It’s not a horror movie, neither is it a thriller, it creates genre of it’s own. The story showcases, or rather exaggerates the idea of limitless human greed confined by limited human knowledge. 

The story revolves around a treasure, a mysterious treasure. The source, nature and origins of the treasure are kept under the wraps, and in the first half we are taken on a journey to understand the treasure. The reveal is truly original, at least I did not anticipate the source of the treasure and it came as a great surprise. The story is a narration coming to life, the narration the grandparents tell their grandchildren, Tumbbad adds images to the narration. Padka Wada ( abandonedold house) is focal point of so many stories, the movie captures the imagination, the eerie feeling, the sense of adventure of an old structure. Every village in this country has that one haunted house, that one dry well, Tumbbad weaves it perfectly. 

The story has the best use of metaphors. The diety has immense wealth and yet is hungry for food, juxtaposition of limitless and the limited. The film carries the theme of contrasts throughout, we see the misery in abundance, a boon of endless life turning into a curse, the principled men of the independence movement bowing to an immoral man for the sake of his money, the poverty in claiming racial superiority with a board ‘selling flour made by a Brahmin’. 

Irony is abounds in the story, those who know about the treasure suffer, those who seek the treasure suffer, and yet those who choose to stay ignorant also suffer. There is no salvation.

The story is powerful in itself, however this does not mean visualisation does not add value. The movie is a cinematic experience. For years whenever I see Indian names in VFX teams of Marvel and Disney movies, I always wondered why the VFX experience in Indian movies is so patchy. This movie is an answer to that complaint, it has excellent visual effects when needed which blend seamlessly with the natural look maintained in the movie. The timeline of the movie is around pre-independence India of early 1900’s, location wise it is set in Tumbbad (probably a fictional village) and the then town of Pune. the imagery that stays with you is the vintage bulky car and the equally bulky motorcycle. Watching it on screen and enjoying the scenes just made me wonder how wonderful it would have been if I could watch ‘Anhilation’ on the big screen. 

Tumbbad caries a moral: a novel story, rooted in Indian folklore, with credible efforts on picturization, WORKS!