Author | 謝以萱
Death has never been the end; rather, it is the start of the story, a prelude to real life. Cactus Pears, Director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s first feature film, is the first Marathi-language feature film to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The director has stated that the beginning of the film, as well as the idea to pen this story, is inspired by himself experiencing the death of his father.
At the start of the film, the main protagonist, Anand, hears of his father’s death and travels from Mumbai back to his hometown to participate in a ten-day traditional funeral. An unmarried man over thirty years old, Anand doesn’t squarely fit in any role in his family’s funeral: dictated by traditional values in an agrarian community, Anand, unmarried and single, is constantly in a tense relationship with his relatives, who’ve admonished Anand under the guise of caring. However, what truly disturbs his relatives is Anand’s soft resistance to mainstream values. This film avoids scenes of direct and fiery conflict, with the director instead choosing to introduce complex emotions into the slow and delayed rhythm of the narrative.
Many scenes in the film are calm with little dialogue, but not silent. On the contrary, Kanawade spends a great deal of effort on audiovisual cues, especially sound design, all to create the depth of a character living in India’s countryside, who’s bound by traditional social values and imbued with mourning and depression caused by the death of a loved one. Using a multi-layered film language, the director shows the emotional landscape of the characters through a sensory experience.
The creative team recorded over 600 hours of sound effects, featuring the clucking chickens, the chirping birds, the swooshing wind, the pelting rain, and the bustling villagers. The movie contains no scenes with only a single track of background music; instead, each frame features elaborately layered ambient sounds, letting the audience personally experience the rhythm of an agricultural lifestyle and the period of mourning that feels like it is dragging on. The music is not impatient or noisy; it projects the movie character’s inner state. By reconstructing everyday sounds and scenery, the soundscape becomes the narrative’s secondary protagonist.
Anand’s sadness and grief doesn’t solely come from the death of his beloved father; the constraint of traditional societal norms. Once back in his village, Anand encounters Balya, a former acquaintance, and the two develop an ambiguous but close friendship. In a rural community where interpersonal relationships are oftentimes too invasive, Anand requires space and time to overcome his sadness and depression, and his friendship with Balya gives him an opportunity to breathe. The two ride a motorcycle on a sparsely populated mountain road, rubbing each other’s hair under the tree where the wind stirs the leaves; every human embrace and touch of hair is not only the display of a homosexual relationship, but also a demonstration that while in grief, one can regain freedom in life, acknowledge oneself, and feel the possibility of love and belonging.
As his father’s funeral is nearing the end, Anand proposes bringing Bayla to Mumbai for work; his relatives, once again, question his unwillingness to get married. Anand’s mother is the one who knows him the best, and she skillfully uses his past emotional trauma to justify his stance on not getting married. Already coming from humble origins, Anand’s mother, now a widow, has no status in the family. Anand’s mother weaves fibs as a survival strategy for her and her son, the two of them on the fringe of the patriarchal family structure. Anand worries that overstepping the line will bring trouble for his mother, especially being gossipped by friends and family. The moving scene where Anand and his mother talk on the rooftop displays the bonds of family affection, with the two of them simply wishing each other a life free from hurt.
Cactus Pears is a movie about freedom and love. The movie explores how to create space within the limitations of social norms and find the possibility for the mind, body, and spirit to be free. When conflicts occur, how can we understand and reconcile? A majority of Anand’s sadness comes from the void left by his father’s death, whereas the rest comes from the regret of never sharing his queer identity with his father. Anand did not care about what others thought of him; all he cared about was how his father understood his decision not to marry. But alas, life and death are worlds apart.
The director meticulously uses several scenes to present the link between life and death. For example, a fortune teller asserts to Anand that his father has turned into a bird; later, when Anand wanders in the woods and hears birdsong, he feels consoled. As the funeral comes to an end, Anand falls asleep in the temple alone after a ceremonial shaving. Half-asleep, he sees his father standing in the Hanuman Temple, smiling at him. The two embrace, and Anand lays his head on his father’s shoulder with serenity on his face, knowing no words are needed to understand each other.
Cactus Pears is not only a tasteful and touching contemporary queer movie, but it also outlines the many layers to an Indian family’s story. The director said he made the movie to bring life to the big screen. The life he describes is more than a realistic experience; it also provides people a chance to feel and imagine reality, for when we accompany movie characters with the same experience, we have more opportunities to understand those different from ourselves. In a world where differences can coexist, cacti fruits may be prickly, but each of them contains a sweetness within