Pihu: Starring Myra, Prerna Sharma, voices of Rahul Bagga and Hrishita Bhatt; Directed by Vinod Kapri; Rating: ****(4 stars).
If Macaulay Culkin was a
little girl who was a far better actor than he, and if Home Alone was
a tragic terrifying nervewracking exposition on a 2-year child left
all alone in a house filled with electric gadgets and dangerous
inclines and a dead parent, this is the film you would get.
Let's be thankful for the
new wave in Hindi cinema that has gripped the Bollywood script in
2018 like an obstinate fever. Pihu
pushes the envelope so far you can't see the stamp of any other
film on it. On seeing the trailer I had compared Pihu to Chetan
Anand's Aakhri Khat.And to a large extent that parallel remains
pertinent.
To simply watch a child
fending for herself is the most heartbreaking ode to vulnerability on
this side of Sadma. As Pihu prances, giggles, groans and finally
weeps her way through the nightmarish emptiness of her well-appointed
home, I kept wondering how the director would hold our attention for
a full-length feature film with just a 2-year protagonist on
screen... Or for that matter, how will he get the 2-year child to go
through the motions of an imminent catastrophic crisis?
On both counts I am happy
to say Pihu scores high points. Not only are we unconditionally
riveted to little Pihu's instinctive survival methods (don't think
Culkin, think Tom Hanks in Castaway) the little wonder-actress is
astonishingly clued in to the way the camera works.
In no time we surrender
to Pihu's distressful circumstance while she remains oblivious to it.
At times her expressions of exasperation at the mess that karma has
suddenly dealt her, are so profound I felt I was watching a seasoned
actress rather than a child who doesn't even know what the camera (or
karma) is and yet Pihu, for all its disposition to overpower us with
a one-character survival saga, is never short of breath.
Director Vinod
Kapri never runs out of ways to engage our senses in the most
heightened state of emotional vulnerability. I can't begin to imagine
how Kapri directed the child.
I suspect the child
directed herself most of the time, mumbling cajoling coaxing and
pleading baby-talk as her mother refuses to answer, breaking into a
lisping song (Nani teri morni ko more le gayi will never be the same
again), tiptoeing on her little feet to reach for her mother's
cellphone to tell her absentee Papa that Mama is sleeping.
Oh, this is the most
heartbreaking horror tale of domestic desolation you will ever see.
That's for sure. The jarring notes are provided by extraneous voice.
Pihu's father on the
phone sounds like he is participating in a Vividh Bharti play. Noises
of a maidservant, watchman and others incidental voices outside the
apartment where Pihu is trapped (think Rajkummar Rao with a
feeding-bottle in Trapped) sound like they've been hired to create
sound effects.
These apart, Pihu hits
all the right notes scaring the hell out of us as the little girl
gets into one potentially life-threatening situation after another,
all in the ironical 'safety' of her own home.
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