Still from the film Photo: Loco Films Still from the film Photo: Loco Films Natesh Hegde’s precise, accomplished sophomore feature, Vaghachipani (Tiger’s Pond) presents an unravelling. Seemingly placid surfaces crack, secrets spill and violence erupts. We are whisked into the titular village in Southern India that’s under the clutch of Prabhu (Achyut Kumar) and his army of goons. It’s a fiefdom, wholly predicated on fear and brute force. His right-hand man, Malbari (Dileesh Pothan), executes all his orders, even if he may not agree with them. When the film opens, local elections in the village are right around the corner. Prabhu is canvassing to come to power though he already has it in effect. Contentions in his path coalesce around two figures—the outcaste worker, Basu (Gopal Hegde) and the mentally challenged shepherdess, Pathi (Sumitra). Both have what may appear as marginal presences but progressively exert central, decisive influence. Prabhu has to raze past them to get what he seeks.
Still from the film Photo: Berlinale Still from the film Photo: BerlinaleIn many ways, this is a story as old as time itself. Its beats are familiar. So, the swing is to the temper of the telling. At times, Vaghachipani is tonally dispassionate, probing with firm reserve; at other times, it wields the emotional effect of a raw wound.
A matrix of greed and crime sucks everyone into a vortex, where morality muddies and lies forge their own language. There are cover-ups, wily orchestrations. Hegde, who’s also written the screenplay, unfurls them with careful, considered deliberation. The director pulls us slowly and luxuriously into his world. Tense dynamics gradually unfold. Prabhu’s younger brother, Venkati (Natesh Hegde), and Malbari’s sister, Devaki, are a secret couple. Of course, Prabhu would hear of no such thing. Malbari may do everything for him, but Prabhu is wary of a deeper association; after all, the former is far lower on the caste rung than him.
1234 slot time Still from the film Photo: Mulberry Media Still from the film Photo: Mulberry MediaAn immigrant, Malbari hinges on his master to cement his footing in the village. Prabhu pushes him to the worst to do his bidding. Malbari does baulk and question but ultimately caves in. He’s not unaware of him being just a plaything for Prabhu, someone the latter feels perfectly licensed to humiliate and ridicule in public. Ironically, Malbari’s hulking physicality is juxtaposed pointedly with his definitive powerlessness.
A still speck of a moment gathers echoing amplitude in Hegde’s cinema. The expanse of long shots occasionally fractures into a series of zoom-ins, as well as Bressonian shots of feet. Working with his regular collaborators, cinematographer Vikas Urs and sound designer Shreyank Nanjappa, Hegde bares the fester that smothers the village in systemic hopelessness. Vaghachipani casts its prismatic shades on the irrevocable nature of avarice and sin. Its shadow looms vast. There’s a certain bleakness in the drama, its lurch toward an utter impunity for amoral characters.
‘Space dictates the drama, not the characters’| Interview With Natesh Hegde on Vaghachipani (Tiger's Pond)Like in his debut, Pedro (2021), the terrain and the shifting wind through it are enmeshed in the telling. It’s a dense, concentrated style—by turns,bw777 casino both allusive and establishing. Hegde lets us breathe, mull through elliptical passages, where dialogues retreat and suggestive, loaded images flower. The camera ambles through the rural spaces, as if tugging at clues in the air. Urs carves every element of the environment—boulders in the terrain, tint of fallen, heaped leaves—into a drama with rumbling undercurrents. Ochre hues themselves seem to be shrouding something within. Sound and image combine in a thick, moody mix. The film derives its charge from latent collisions between posturing sincerity and absolute deception. Every other face you meet conceals a dark history.
Still from the film Photo: Mulberry Media Still from the film Photo: Mulberry MediaPathi occupies a distanced position, removed from the violent churn in the village. Mute, she observes it all. But soon, the storm crashes upon her. A pregnancy arrives like a jolt, sending Prabhu into an anxious muddle to root it out. For the most part, apart from a key later scene, Hegde doesn’t show the horror so much as he turns to its aftermath. The anguish, nevertheless, is tapped with blistering specificity. In the shock of bereavement, Venkati buries the dead loved one in rice, insisting that the act can revive him.
Still from the film Photo: Mulberry Media Still from the film Photo: Mulberry MediaHegde keeps a bit of a veil around Basu’s projection; the degree and intent of his motivations—how politically inclined or honest they are— is up for scrutiny. But he’s also posited in the film as an uncompromising, severe reflection of the disguise those around him are in. He’s the conduit of a pivotal confession as well as a rupturing force. Exposing the fault lines, unafraid to challenge the order, Basu becomes a threat. Gopal Hegde’s searching, unwavering gaze stabs like an indictment. As much as those inconvenienced, obstructed by him, try to bend away, his defiant look cuts through.
‘I didn’t want the easy way out while making the sequel’| Interview with Rima Das on Village Rockstars 2Loosely adapted from the short stories of Amaresh Nugadoni, Vaghachipani doesn’t get mired in the bramble and heave of plotting, despite the drama having underhand scheming aplenty. Hegde is obviously not interested in conventional narrative structures, swerving to evoke rather than illustrate. Much of the injustice, the skewedness in investigations or the slanting of culpability become entrenched in the very channels of dispensation. Power remains locked in the grip of one. Is there guilt at all, a twinge of remorse for their misdeed? The cynicism of the film implies none, but a freeze frame also alludes to a necessary confrontation, a self-reckoning. The unwanted individual may be disposed of; yet they linger on, phantom-like. Formally adept and visually rich, Vaghachipani keeps all the promises of Hegde’s debut, reinforcing him as one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary Indian cinema.
Vaghachipani (Tiger’s Pond) premiered at the 75th Berlin Film Festival in the Forum section.
Meanwhilecgebet, South Korea were knocked out by the defending champions, India, with a 1-4 defeat in the semi-final. In their pool stage encounter, South Korea had previously played to a 2-2 draw against their next opponent, Pakistan.