The Village House (Gamak Ghar), the directorial debut of Achal Mishra, shows episodes in the life of an Indian family and their house over several decades. Watching the journey of this family and their home can’t be called a slow boil, especially since there is no real boiling point to the film. Much like in real life, things change over a long period of time, and the viewer can only view the transformation in retrospect. The movie does this in an interesting and engaging way, arguably entirely due to its treatment – without any dramatic fights or climactic events. It’s as if you are watching the family and their house from a neighbour’s perspective – akin to Boyhood but for a house.
To preface with some valuable context on what exactly a village house is, many families in India trace their roots to a village where their grandparents or distant ancestors build their homes. Everyone started off living together like a big family, but eventually, folks moved to cities or other towns searching for better employment opportunities. The Village House talks about a similar house and the family that starts their roots there. We are introduced to a multi-generational household where most of the relatives live together. We aren’t formally introduced to all the family members and only know them through interactions and dialogue. There are, in fact, very few, if at all, any close-up shots of people in the movie. This seems very deliberate since the story isn’t essentially about one character or their actions. Instead, we get several close-up shots of things the family experiences, like mangoes or food. The house becomes the central character since it is the only thing we see repeated shots of. You know this family feels warmth and love for one another early on. The men are often playing, lazing, running errands, and eating and the women are usually cooking and talking; my favourite though are the children, utterly oblivious, always up to play and obedient in the company of elders.
The movie shows the family gathering at the village house at times of different festivals or occasions. The occasions are especially interesting since it is either ritual related to a birth in the family, last rites or rite of passage for a young one. Perhaps it is a metaphor for the rites of passage that a village house goes through. The family starts off being very close in the first one-third of the film, eating and celebrating together. You can sense the feeling of mutual care and sharing they have for each other. However, as time progresses, family members migrate and buy houses in other cities. Disagreements over property creep in, and overall a sort of uneasy distance enters the family. This is mirrored beautifully in the house itself, which slowly starts showing signs of wearing out, eventually falling into a state of disrepair and ultimately breaking down, like the great Indian joint family. There are scenes of someone sweeping the house, but the dust wins much like the ravages of time. In our final farewell to the house, the patriarch, while having the house demolished, wishes the workers to be careful while demolishing the roof, much like we can only ask that our memories be handled carefully.
Special mention must be made about the visuals in this movie weaved together by cinematographer Anand Bansal and the production design of Avni Goyal and colourist Mahak Gupta. There is obviously a technical aspect to how the various parts of the story are shot at different aspect ratios to evoke a sense of closeness and then eventual drifting. Even the cinematography does some subtle things to make some memories more real, but other things seem distant, almost as if dust is settling on the house and the family ties as we are watching. The other aspect is how nostalgia-inducing the visuals are.
Even watching the trailer for this movie immediately evoked a strong emotional reaction. In a way, the story, themes and visuals were very similar to my own childhood. In fact, I would bet most folks growing up in India around that time would’ve felt the same. I have memories of summers visiting my grandmother in the village. I remember the lazy afternoons, the playing cards and various games with cousins, and of course, the totem of this movie, mangoes. My grandmother would specially collect and save mangoes for all the children.
My parents were visiting us at the time when I viewed this movie, and my mother and I kept finding things that looked familiar to us. We would reminisce about the typical things we would find in a village house of that time. It shows a lot of care, love and attention to detail from the filmmakers. This isn’t nostalgia porn; this isn’t token mentions and images of the greatest hits of the era. It is almost non-performative. The familiarities for us went beyond just the surface-level aesthetics. Some issues and incidents that occur within the family depicted in the movie are starkly similar to my family’s own experiences. This underlines that the story is nobody’s in particular but instead tells a story that is universal.
The Village House is available now on digital platforms via Deaf Crocodile