Jugnuma lays out its visual ambition at the outset. Raam Reddy’s second movie after the Kannada comedy Thithi (2015) begins with a man entering his workshop, coolly strapping on wings as though he is putting on a pair of boots, walking to the edge of a cliff and taking off, like a giant falcon.
From this surreal sequence, Jugnuma settles down to earthly concerns. Reddy’s Hindi film, originally titled The Fable, is a flight of fancy that is also tethered to events at a plantation somewhere in the mountains of north India.
Dev (Manoj Bajpayee), owner of a fruit orchard that has been in his family for generations, is in a battle with the elements. Fires are ripping through the sprawling orchard, breaking out without warning and seemingly without human involvement. It’s not just the produce that is being charred – the trust between the orchard owner and his labourers is being destroyed too.
An air of bewilderment clings to Dev, his wife Nandini (Priyanka Bose) and estate manager Mohan (Deepak Dobriyal). In another corner, Dev and Nandini’s daughter Vanya (Hiral Sidhu) is getting into a strange zone with a member of a group of monks.
There are both rational and irrational explanations for what is happening at the orchard, just as there are magical moments tucked into the increasingly dull investigation into the source of the fires. The smoke wafting from the burnt bushes, the sudden presence of fireflies, the gnomic monks – there is a feeling of a life cycle coming to an end.
But the film’s balance eventually tips in favour of the explanatory rather than the suggestive. The stilted dialogue, irregular pacing and serviceable performances block the story’s fabular potential from emerging.
Most of the enchantment is in the gorgeous visuals, and the feeling of timelessness evoked by them.
Cinematographer Sunil Borkar has shot Jugnuma on 16mm film stock. Colourist Himanshu Kamble has treated the entire movie to resemble footage stumbled upon from a bygone era. Some of the shots of the mountains in the distance resemble a Nicholas Roerich painting.
The use of an analogue-era shooting medium combined with the vintage-y colourisation give the film a lush, tactile quality rarely seen in Indian films. At least in its compositions, if not always in its encounters between confused humans, Jugnuma achieves the expectations set up by the mysterious man and his magnificent wings in the opening scene.
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