Bright Future screening - review - QISSA by Anup Singh

“This film is a father’s dream about a daughter he betrayed”. This is how director Anup Singh described his latest film Qissa at the 43^rd International Film Festival Rotterdam. It is a description that also rings true for numerous reasons. The film can in fact be described as dream like. It tells the story of a father who, during the Indian partition, dreams of giving birth to a son who will bring a new identity and even start a new dynasty for his people. However, when he is disappointed after his fourth-born turns out to be a girl once again, he decides to bring her up as a boy – a decision that inevitably ends up haunting him and his family as well as his daughter as time goes by.

The plot of the film itself feels nightmarish and dark. Nevertheless, despite the heavy psychological undertones, Singh never allows his film to be driven by feelings of anger and spite, almost as if he were trying to meditate on a different and even warmer viewpoint on the situation. This provides a totally different perspective on this type of storyline, one in fact that has rarely been seen and provokes compelling emotional responses on the audience.

Furthermore, the dreamlike quality is also visual. There is a wonderful contrast between the colourful sets and costumes and the mostly dark photography. But it is also the cinematography, with its musical and flowing rhythm and pace which makes the film seem fluid. On top of that, by also giving a lot of room to the landscape, it deepens the metaphorical representation of the cultural context of Qissa. Time and place in this film are, after all, very important in this film, and just by taking it into consideration, one can understand the different motives of the characters, despite still feeling an inability to endorse the father’s stubborn behaviour.

The cast deserves a lot of praise. These are characters that are simply not easy to play, and they even share uncomfortable, awkward and harsh situations among each other. Irrfah Khan as the father is truly admirable. After gaining worldwide recognition by starring  in The Life of Pi and going on to star in last year’s The Lunchbox, one of the best films about platonic love in which he plays a solitary widower who connects with an estranged and neglected housewife after a lunchbox mix-up at his workplace, here he plays the villainous figure. On paper, this is a role that expects him to play as a cold-hearted and evil man. However, he remains quite soft-spoken for most of the film and his eyes conceal a frustration and vulnerability that makes him human and not the obvious cartoonish and two dimensional figure we would have expected.

Another thing that must be said about Qissa is that it burns a lot of bridges in Indian cinema. Singh here deals with many themes in human and original ways. Firstly, it humanises a political and delicate issue such as that of partition, which he had already dealt with in Name of a River (though in a very different way), and that is obviously a theme that is very close to his heart. However, some of the undertones of the film are very daring too. For instance, in one of the film’s most important plot turns, the daughter raised as a boy is married off to a girl. Upon the newlywed’s realisation, the two girls come to connect in a way in which they never thought possible, and they even eventually admit to being in love with each other as they run off together. This is a veiled hint at homosexuality that is more than a rarity and a taboo in Indian cinema that in many ways feels nothing short of revolutionary.

Made twelve years after his stunning debut Name of a River, Qissa confirms Singh as a very human and yet fairy-tale storytelling figure and voice of the cultural and historical identity of India. In this film. Let’s hope we won’t have to wait another twelve years for another one!