Harishchandra on film

Harishchandrachi Factory (Harishchandra’s Factory)

Marathi, 2009

Paresh Mokashi’s film is not so much a sweeping biopic as a comic re-imagining of the two years that went into the making of the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra by Dhundiraj G. Phalke. Although it steps heavily on the enormity of the event, it is mostly done through implications and title-cards. However, the director refuses to let this determine the tone of the film and chooses, instead, to highlight the attitudes of the people surrounding Phalke. The film aspires to be a comedy of manners, primarily, and then establishes the idea of cinema as another symbol of modernity that was assimilated in unique and interesting ways that still marks most Indian films to be ‘different’ from the processes of Hollywood or European cinema.

The story begins in the year 1911 with creditors hounding Phalke (played by Nandu Madhav) who makes a modest living out of performing magic tricks in Girgaum, Bombay. We learn that he has given up a job in a printing press following an argument with his partner and then does not wish to start his own press either. Running from his creditors, he chances upon a clutch of tents screening motion pictures for an English audience. Intrigued, he buys a ticket and watches a film called ‘The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ’.  Fascinated by the moving images on screen, he tries to learn about the process of making movies. He returns obsessively to the small tent to watch films, suffers temporary blindness and, in a memorable scene, sits with his back to the screen, staring at the beam of light from the projector. With the constant support of his wife and two children, he ends up selling most of his furnishings and travels to a film office in London to learn the craft. Back in Bombay, he manages to get a financer after pawning his wife’s jewellery and starts collecting a motley cast and crew with a priest for a cinematographer. “He was a chaste priest, but my still camera seduced him”, says Phalke. Unable to find any women willing to perform in front of a camera he convinces a prostitute to essay the role of Harishchandra’s wife only to have a client barge angrily into the set and denounce Phalke for teaching the girl ‘dirty things’ and drag her away. He is forced then to use men for the women characters in the film.

After an eccentric shoot, the film is released to a tepid response until Phalke hits upon the idea of a massive publicity campaign. The film then becomes a massive success as a completely new audience rushes in to watch a ‘moving picture with Indian mythological characters’. Dadasaheb Phalke is offered an opportunity to make films in London but he refuses to move stating that he wishes to establish it as an industry in India.

As a re-imagining, the director employs the conceit of allying his subject (Phalke) with the subject of the implied film-within-film Raja Harishchandra. Like the protagonist in his film, Phalke is dispossessed of almost everything he owns in order to secure financing and is playfully taunted by everyone for being a ‘Harishchandra’. The comedy also seeks to work against this pairing as Phalke discovers the correct subject for his film can only be the honest and suffering king, while also discovering that as a producer he “cannot always tell the truth”.

We are alerted to at least two important sources of inspiration for Phalke’s choice of subject. The film on Jesus Christ and the epic re-interpretations of Raja Ravi Varma canvases which form the template of Phalke’s film. Myth and melodrama in an unyielding mix. Just like it’s difficult to forego critical attitudes while evaluating pioneering efforts like D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) and its disturbing xenophobic politics, Mokashe seems to be saying, one must also take Phalke’s stabs at myth-making with a pinch of salt.

However, he does not pontificate and, instead, presents us with a faux early film himself with lots of speeded-up montages and quick, slapstick humour. Nandu Madhav plays ‘Dadabhai’ Phalke like Keaton or Chaplin with great effervescence reflecting the tireless spirit of Phalke himself. Vibhavari Deshpande, who plays Phalke’s wife and production assistant, developing prints, operating the camera and, of course, cooking food for the entire unit, also turns in an assured and strong performance.

The film explores the attitudes of Phalke’s neighbours and early audience who are convinced that he’s gone cuckoo and try to drug him and take him to a mental hospital. The issue of androgyny looks forward, perhaps, to the stereotyped men’s characters in Hindi films who are forced to balance between a ripped body, dainty dance routines and mother-issues. Responding to the complaints about the lack of respectability in their profession, Phalke asks his actors to tell everyone that they are working in a factory. Again, this could look playfully back at the origins of cinema itself when a group of men trudged out of a factory in a Lumière brothers short, or comment on the newfound symbols of respectability in an India transformed by modernity.

Although the film touches lightly on all the issues it invokes, it performs best at the level of a fine, farcical comedy addressing a new people exposed to what would come to be the most popular culture-industry by the end of the century.