REVIEW: Harishchandrachi Factory

THE DREAM MACHINE

First-time director Paresh Mokashi turns the Father of Indian Cinema into a Chaplinesque figure who’s eccentric, happy-go-lucky, but most of all, deeply passionate about making a moving picture at any cost. Literally. As the story goes, out-of-work printer, former photographer and part-time magician Dhundiraj Govind Phalke stumbled into a tent theatre in Bombay to watch The Life of Christ in 1910 and was drawn towards the nascent medium. But he lived in a time and milieu that frowned upon anything unconventional—particularly the performing arts—and given his precarious financial situation, his ambition seemed even more imprudent at the time.

Luckily, Phalke’s wife Saraswati was an extraordinary woman who, if Harishchandrachi Factory is to be believed, readily allowed him to sell off the furniture in the house, offered to pawn her jewellery and let him pledge his insurance policy as security to raise funds to travel to England to study filmmaking while she gave birth to their daughter Mandakini and looked after their two older sons. Phalke himself braved near blindness before he sailed to London and met Cecil Hepworth to return a few weeks later with a movie camera and equipment to make Raja Harishchandra.

Mokashi chooses light-hearted comedy over sentimentality to delineate this fascinating journey fraught with obstacles. Life in the Phalke household couldn’t have been as maddeningly cheerful as it appears on screen. Phalke cooks for his children while Saraswati learns how to use the camera equipment (since she’s the only assistant he can readily find) and his boys are uncomplaining about their arbitrary lifestyle as they move out of their familiar environment in Girgaum to ‘far flung’ Dadar where the film unit sets up base in a sprawling bungalow.

The idea isn’t to make a sombre biopic but doff a hat to the man’s singular obsession. Phalke scouts the city’s red-light areas determined to find a woman who will agree to play Taramati (this was a time when women were forbidden from acting on stage and men played women’s roles) before he grudgingly settles for a boy called Salunke who works at a tea stall. He trains and disciplines the entire unit, personally paints backdrops and acts out parts to demonstrate how to perform before the camera. When his son gets injured during the shoot, he insists on finishing the day’s work before the light fades, but on the journey back home, gently explains his motives to the boy lying on his lap.

Sadly, there’s nothing left of Phalke’s maiden film and somehow Harischandrachi Factory seems incomplete without that vital footage. Also missing from the picture is a grand visual sweep – although the production design is impeccable and the period setting authentic. To Mokashi’s credit, he works around the limitations of budget by infusing his narrative with vitality. And Nandu Madhav approaches the central character with an obsessive zeal, as though he were determined to embody Phalke’s spirit and be a part of his pioneering effort. Vibhavari Deshpande (who also played Atul Kulkarni’s wife in Natarang) pitches Saraswati as a sensible and compassionate woman ahead of her times.

Harishchandrachi Factory ends on the note of Phalke’s success. Following the release of Raja Harishchandra in 1913, he refused offers to move base to England and set up his own studio at Nashik instead, producing innumerable silent films before falling upon bad days and dying a forgotten man. Mokashi doesn’t dwell on his tragic destiny but instead, celebrates the never-say-die spirit of a visionary who helped establish the largest film industry in the world. And rightly so.