Vihir : The Review

11 PM... 
one of those days when you want to watch a movie that just flows like a river... you ask her half-heartedly if she has any suggestions... she comes up with a weird name "Vihir"... you have heard the name... "no.." you say... not in that mood... and you go back to your minesweeper... nothing comes up in your mind... except Sooraj Ka Saatvan Ghoda... which you have already seen 10s of times .... and which happily provides you a refuge when no other films you think would .... "Lets see.... Vihir"... she repeats as if it is a new suggestion... it is getting on your nerves now... "forget it" you say and get back to your game....  and then suddenly there's this sound, as if it is coming from a river flowing nearby, reaches you.... it's not the river.... but is equally pleasing .... you feel as if you are hearing Ananda Shankar's Tanusree... but its not.... you look at the movie that she has already started....

4 AM... 
she has gone to sleep.... you are still watching the movie... you have played and replayed the scenes... again and again... your eyes are moist.... you want to cry.... the film ends.... and all you want to do is to cry !!!

Directed by Umesh Kulkarni, Vihir is a film about two teenagers who are cousins-cum-friends... it is a film about their journey to seek the meaning of death... and it is about their search to find the hidden answers of life... it is this hide and seek of life and death that the film has portrayed outstandingly well. And what an astonishing way to portray this thru the game itself...

The film starts with Nachiket, Sameer(Samya) and the exchange of letters between the two... Nachiket, the elder of the two, has finished his 10th and is puzzled by the way the world works with it's idiosyncrasies... he seeks the answers of things which are somewhere between the layers of physics and spirituality.... he wants to find the universe's center of energy... he wants to feel the moment when the energy changes it's form... Sameer, on the other hand, has no interest in physics or for that matter studies. His interest lies in swimming... for him the highs of the life lie in doing a care-free backstroke under the cloudy sky... The common thing that brings a shine in their eyes is the chance to meet and spend time together during their aunt's upcoming marriage...


All the sisters have reached their parents house with their children weeks prior to the wedding to help the family prepare for the wedding.... the children use this time to play the game of hide-and-seek.... while all the children are trying to hide: Nachiket, instead of hiding in some dark corner, sits right in the veranda quietly, when asked by the aunt he explains... he cannot be seen as he is invisible. Later on, when the game ends he is asked by Sameer the reason for not hiding.... he explains that the one who is seeking tries to find in all the dark corners but is oblivious to the things that are visible to his eyes... and hence if you don't try to hide... the seeker will not be able to find you as no one looks at the things that are visible to eyes. He tries to explain to Sameer that being invisible is not being not there but ... being invisible is looking at things but not perceiving them to be there.... It is at this point that Sameer sees a spark of the struggle that is going inside Nachiket.... neither the ability to grasp such a theory nor the wish to understand it further Sameer gives up the topic calling it complex physics.

while the family is engrossed in the preparation, financial and other difficulties of the sisters and the bride's reluctance to marry, Nachiket and Samya see the things from their newly found perspective which is the first tragedy of their adolescence... they are at a weird cross-roads of life where in they understand that the life is not as simple as the game of hide and seek or a bedtime story....  they also don't have the maturity to understand the worldly ways and the logic behind it.... it is this mid-way between two worlds that intrigues them, especially Nachiket. Although quiet on the outside, there is a battle that has started within him.... it is even worse for him as he feels away from the family and the worldly things that he does not agree with...

Meanwhile in-between the continuous bustling at the home... Nachiket and Samya visit the village well to swim and keep visiting it. During one such visit, Nachiket talks about running away with the wind... Samya, crazy about his elder brother, quips that he would catch up with him wherever Nachiket would go.... Nachiket tells him how disturbed and suffocated he feels in the world and how he would like to run away from everyone and everything and be free like the wind... Samya is angry towards his brother and the best friend, as he can not imagine his life without Nachiket.... he also can not understand the things on life, death and being invisible... for him it is just the complex physics which is on the verge of taking his best friend away from him....

Samya leaves the village for a short visit to his city for the swimming competition.... he returns back only to find his cousin, mentor and best friend Nachiket leaving everybody behind... but he has not run away.... he has drowned in the same well that they used to visit and talk in.... its here that samya's long journey starts.... he can not understand the fact that Nachiket is no longer with him to talk to or to write to.... it even disturbs him more that he could not understand what Nachiket meant when he perceived it to be complex physics.... the only clue he has is that Nachiket was disturbed and felt suffocated by the world around him... and he wanted to run away like wind being invisible...

... and thus begins Samya's quest to find the answers that his big brother took away with him. It is an incredible mourning and pain inside Samya that keeps questioning the reason behind the death and life... the movie reaches its climax when samya runs away from the home to seek nachiket not in some dark corner of his gloomy existence but in the most visible places his eyes could never see....  the second half of the movie has another actor to it in form of silence... have never seen silence being used so well in a film before... it is a deafening silence of the struggle within Samya... and at the same time it is an extremely quiet residual of the world that Samya is left with, after Nachiket's departure.... it is this journey that he has to make alone.... in the end this film is not about the eternal spark Nachiket had... but it becomes Samya' journey from darkness to brightness

I will leave it to the readers (if at all there are any) to find  whether Samya catches up with Nachiket or not.

The film is a visual treat... the angles that Sudhir Palsane has used not only makes you a part of the film but also brings emotions by making the audience a member of the vast maternal family... there are countless scene which will take your breath away.... the initial one where in you are taken into the house is fascinating.... it is the first scene that actually sets the tone of the entire movie.... you will feel as if you have been whisked into the game of hide-and-seek.... one of the high point in cinematography is Sudhir's ability to capture the distant scenes... the camera is deliberately away even in some of the scenes which show Sameer and Nachiket's emotions... I am sure the crew would have known that the viewer would be flowing in the emotions that they want to bring out.. the usage of the distant angles for characters using the well, the family yard, the trees, the vast barren lands makes the invisible character of the rustic village to life...

The music by Mangesh Dhakade is exceptional. The silence within the film and the music has been used as the master stroke... they have just melted with the script....  I guess the credit of it goes to the writers Satee Bhave, Girish Kulkarni(who also plays the uncle in the film splendidly) and the director.


The film has Mohan Agashe, Sulabha Deshpande and other actors... however, it is the chemistry between Madan Deodhar and Aalok Rajwade playing Nachadada and Samya that brings the film to life.... in fact it has been shot so well you will feel the director has put cameras on actual locations with actual people...


One of the best films I have ever seen... Simply superb... wish I could be invisible and go back to the streets of my childhood again... hope the wind carries me with it... and hope it hides me well.

.... and yes I was an ass to ignore this gem.... I saw this more than a year after it released.... would have been decades had "A" not pestered me.....

Thanks Sudhish Kamath and Amrita for sharing such a treat !!!

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