Hail, divine psychedelic motorcycle: why I dug Dug Dug

Another film I greatly enjoyed in a hall (late-night show, very few people around, just the right environment) is Ritwik Pareek’s Dug Dug, wherein a “miracle-performing” motorcycle becomes a deity and is plied with offerings of liquor and cigarettes in honour of its late owner. (It was pretty funny to see the “tobacco and liquor harmful” caution on the corner of the screen almost throughout, considering that the film itself was treating these things as markers of piety.) Right from the mesmeric opening sequence involving neon lights, a creepy billboard, acid music and an almost-deserted road, Dug Dug creates a distinct mood, largely through sound and set design that evoke the heydays of psychedelia (Hunter Thompson on a Rajasthani highway, if you will). An echoing effect accompanies some of the dialogue too, creating a sense of things heard and seen as if through glass, or underwater. (This also fits the narrative, since much of the talk involves people who are either drunk on hooch or seeing mirages and miracles in the desert – the kind of setting where religions do tend to take birth.)

I wasn’t sure that the film found the best balance between the two modes it operates in: on one hand there are the abstract, minimal-dialogue passages driven by montage and numbing repetition (these portions felt more organic to me, more apt to a story about zeal and delusion) – on the other hand, there were exposition scenes towards the end that felt a bit overdone. The creation of mood would have been enough, I felt. But this wasn’t a big issue. A very singular film. Jai Shree Luna.

P.S. and the ending reminded me of the Alan Moore quote “The one place Gods inarguably exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute, in all their grandeur and monstrosity”.