Kothanodi (The River of Fables): Movie review at London film Festival
Kothanodi is dark, twisted, and disturbing. It is a brilliant attempt by first-time director Bhaskar Hazarika to bring four Assamese folktales to the visual medium.
The film has a dark undercurrent that keeps you constantly on the edge, creating a brilliant blend of reality and magic realism. It weaves together unsettling stories of women pushed to the brink—from a stepmother plotting murder and a woman giving birth to a vegetable, to a mother saving her newborn from a murderous husband and a daughter marrying a python.
While the modest budget shows in a few visual moments, like the python scene, it never hampered my viewing experience. The storytelling is simply too strong to let those limitations get in the way.
I saw the screening at the ICA as part of the 2015 London Film Festival and was really impressed. I want to congratulate the whole team for attempting something so different and successfully delivering it.
Synopsis by Cary Rajinder Sawhney
The darkest fairytales are often the most compelling, unsettling us by touching on universal fears and desires. It is a feeling that Bhaskar Hazarika mines with the grotesque magical realism of his debut feature. Four traditional folk fables present disturbing, multi-layered tales of the travails of their female protagonists, revealing the underlying patriarchy that drives the woman to the edge of sanity. Senehi is a village wife who plots her stepdaughter’s murder when her husband leaves for work. Her husband Devinath (Adil Hussain) meets a woman who has given birth to a strange vegetable and resolves to help her unearth the mystery. Meanwhile, in another village a rich woman (Seema Biswas) prepares her daughter for marriage to a python, hoping that untold riches will spring from the union. And a mother resolves to save her newborn child from the husband who buried her previous three babies alive somewhere in the jungle.
Don’t let the trailer fool you. It’s a bit understated and doesn’t quite do the film justice, but thankfully, it gives a taste of the atmosphere without ruining the plot’s biggest secrets.
Director Bhaskar Hazarika
Producers Anurupa Hazarika, Utpala Mukherjee
Screenwriters Bhaskar Hazarika, Arupa Patangia-Kalita
India 2015
115 mins
Production company Metanormal Motion Pictures
Cast
Seema Biswas as Dhoneshwari
Adil Hussain as Devinath
Zerifa Wahid as Senehi
Urmila Mahanta as Keteki
Kopil Bora as Poonai
Asha Bordoloi as Malati
Kasvi Sharma
Monisha Bhuyan
Dr Jayanta Das
Pradhan Deori