Candle-lit memories: time and light in Shyam Benegal's Trikaal

“If the most important subjects of film are light and time,” wrote Peter von Bagh in this excellent essay about one of my favourite movies, “I can’t think of a more poignant work than A Canterbury Tale.” I was reminded of these words while watching Shyam Benegal’s 1985 film Trikaal, especially its first half-hour. Time and light can be said to be central motifs of Benegal’s film too (though perhaps not in the exact sense as von Bagh meant in that essay). One of its main themes is the continuing hold of the past on the present, even as an old and tradition-bound world makes way for a newer, brasher one: set in the Goa of 1960, on the verge of being “liberated” from the Portuguese, it is the story of a family trapped between a grand history and an uncertain future. And at a formal level, its most striking quality – one that consistently enhances the narrative – is Ashok Mehta’s camerawork and use of lighting, among the best I’ve seen in a Hindi movie. (Even on the standard-issue DVD I watched, this is a splendid-looking film; I can imagine how much more satisfying it would be in a restored Cinemas of India print.)

Mehta, who died just a few months ago, was a highly respected cinematographer, noted for his work on Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, Girish Karnad’s Utsav and Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane (the last had a magnificently show-offish nightmare sequence shot in black-and-white and featuring three generations of the Kendal-Kapoor family). In Trikaal he composed some stunning interior shots using candlelight, which plays a big part in crafting the film’s dominant mood: that of an intimate chamber-drama in which groups of people play out their mini-tragedies and mini-comedies in an enclosed, isolated setting. The lighting brings a distinct character to an ancient house full of secrets, and creates a world that seems older than it actually is (offhand I can’t recall if there is a single scene in this film that even acknowledges the existence of electric lights).

In fact, the assuredness of Mehta’s camerawork – and its importance to the film – is obvious right from the opening sequence, in which we see a man journeying (almost literally) into the past. The middle-aged Ruiz Pereira (Naseeruddin Shah in a small sutradhaar role) is revisiting his Goan village Lotli after 24 years, and the taxi – his time machine, so to speak – passes vistas that are new to him, including bland cement buildings and roads built for the recent Commonwealth conference. Music, photography, acting and writing combine to very good effect in this fine establishing sequence. As the cab moves from open, sun-lit roads to canopy-shaded ones, shadows play across Ruiz’s face and long tracking shots from inside the car give us his dreamy-eyed view of his “watan”. (Shah’s subtle performance in this short role allows us to see the years falling away from Ruiz’s face; as the cab draws into Lotli he looks rapt and boyish.) Vanraj Bhatia’s lilting score is a reminder that the Benegal-Bhatia artistic collaboration is among the most underappreciated in our cinema. And there is Shama Zaidi’s dialogue. “Mera gaon jaise Ming daur ka khubsoorat phooldaan hai,” Ruiz muses, “Uska itihaas, uspe naksh kahaani samajh mein na aaye toh keval ek sundar naazuk guldaan hi lagega. Usski poori sanskriti ahista ahista mitt jaayegi. Beetay dinon ki yaad ki tarah.” (“My village is like a Ming dynasty bouquet. If you don’t understand its history, the story inscribed on it, it will only look like a beautiful, delicate cluster of flowers. The culture associated with it will gradually fade away, like old memories.”)

Leaving behind the markers of a modernising world, Ruiz instructs the driver to take the old, rough road and soon arrives at a haveli now fallen to ruin. Well-travelled, clearly a man of the world, having lived in Bombay and worked in the Merchant Navy, he is nonetheless nostalgic about the world of his youth, and much of that youth was spent around this house, which belonged to the Souza-Soares clan. As he enters the darkened hallway, the light around him changes, becoming lush and warm, and the film elegantly glides into the old days.

In a long, amusing sequence we are introduced to the events and people of 24 years earlier (including Ruiz’s own younger self). We learn that the family patriarch Erasmo has just died and that his widow Dona Maria (Leela Naidu) refuses to face reality, continuing to listen to loud music in her room while her family and acquaintances bustle about in confusion. Dona Maria’s shrill daughter Sylvia (Anita Kanwar) is on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she realises that her daughter Anna’s engagement might fall through because of the long mourning period. And watching quietly from the sidelines is Melagrania (Neena Gupta in one of her best roles), the illegitimate child of the dead man, now working as a maid for Dona Maria.

Soon after the funeral, the callow, blandly beautiful Anna (Sushma Prakash) begins a clandestine relationship with a distant cousin of the family, a fugitive named Leon (Dalip Tahil), who is hiding in the cellar. If Anna is the face of the future, her grandmother has a tendency to cling obsessively to the past (while not completely making her peace with it: there is a bizarre subplot in which the old woman is confronted by ghosts from her family’s closets, victims of a tortured colonial history). But the divide between old and new ways of life also manifests itself in class tensions. Though on cordial terms with the family, young Ruiz and his uncle – the local doctor – are clearly outsiders; Ruiz is attracted to Anna, but there is no question of him being allowed to ask for her hand. (Melagrania, a sort of “half-breed” between the upper class and the servant class, is much more accessible to him.) I thought Ruiz’s relationship to the family was comparable to that of Eugene Morgan in Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons – a man who is an outsider in terms of perceived status but who is destined to cope more efficiently with the coming modern world than this family can.

Trikaal doesn’t quite live up to the assuredness of its opening 20 minutes. There is a hurried, incomplete feel to it, as if a couple of key scenes were accidentally left on the cutting table; there are more subplots than the film’s narrative can accommodate, we don’t get enough time with all the characters, and perhaps because of this some of the acting seems uneven or not fully realised. It isn’t as tightly constructed an ensemble movie as Party, which was directed by Benegal’s friend and former cameraman Govind Nihalani a year earlier. But there are things to recommend it, even apart from its visual quality. The scenes involving Dona Maria’s ambivalent relationship with Melagrania are particularly effective (Benegal has always been a sensitive director of women) and there are many interesting people in the large cast, including the under-used Ila Arun, a melancholy-looking youngster named Maqsood Ali (who would go on to singing fame as Lucky Ali a decade or so later), Jayant Kripalani as the perpetually drunk suitor of another Souza-Soares girl, and the rugged Nikhil Bhagat (whose only other major role was in Prakash Jha’s Hip Hip Hurray) as the young Ruiz. Remo Fernandes and Alisha Chennai show up too as a couple of local musicians.

Though the film’s ending was a little abrupt for my liking, I liked how the bookending scenes featuring the older Ruiz were used – how they have the effect of summarily cutting the past off from the present. There is something poignant about the fact that he never encounters an older version of any major figure from the past (which is something one might have expected in a narrative like this). He makes enquiries, gets token information about what happened to this or that person, but he doesn’t actually meet anyone again – there is no closure in that sense. And this allows the viewer to leave with the feeling that the spirits of all those people are still bickering and mourning and making toasts and partying in that creaky old house. In the lovely, ghostly light of Ashok Mehta’s thick candles.

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P.S. heavily made up in the role of Dona Maria’s mousy son-in-law Lucio is a difficult-to-recognise K K Raina – shuffling about in a hunched posture, with false teeth that have an embarrassing tendency to pop out during times of stress. I spent half my viewing of the film wondering which classical movie monster Lucio reminded me of – Nosferatu? No, not quite – and then at last I had it: Fredric March as Mr Hyde in the 1931 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

(I’m not being facetious: it isn’t simply a matter of physical resemblance but of a certain nervous ferocity in both performances. No intention of offending people - or monsters - with false teeth or overbites, or taking anything away from the conceptualisation of the Lucio character, which I thought was quite effective.)