Movie name: Tahaan
Directed by: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Purav Bhandare, Sarika, Anupam Kher, Rahul Bose, Rahul Khanna, Victor Banerjee
Showing at: City Pride (Kothrud)

Out of the mouth of babes. Santosh Sivan is at his best when he works with children, and his latest is a fine example: Tahaan plays out both like a touchingly real story, as well as a fable, hinting at deeper truths beneath.

Eight-year-old Tahaan lives with his ailing grandfather, mother and older sister in a derelict house on the outskirts of Srinagar. The family is slowly being driven to the ground by mounting debt, and despair. The continuing absence of the man of the house, Tahaan’s father, and the non-stop shelling on the streets, works as a story driver, as well as a metaphor for the situation in the Kashmir valley: The unrest within both fuels and feeds off the strife outside.

Sivan’s style here is just like in the rest of his work: Simple, direct, slowly peeling off the layers to reach a climactic point. Tahaan (Purav Bhandare) is the moving spirit of the film. The boy’s multiple relationships-with his old grandpa (Victor Bannerjee), his mother (Sarika), who can’t speak, his chatterbox sister, and his beloved donkey, Birbal, forms the plane on which the rest is built.

A child and an animal is an irresistible combination. And it carries the film through, even in its not-so-satisfactory, sluggish moments. Rahul Bose as khachchar-carrier villager, tricked out with pale blue contact lenses, carries little conviction. And the reference to the empty houses of Kashmiri Pandits, who’ve fled the valley, is left dangling.

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