Elephants In The Fog marks the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah. Following Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar community in a small village nestled in a forest inhabited by wild elephants. Pirati starts to struggle with her desires to live a normal life with her obligations to the community and her daughters as tensions ramp up between the Kinnars and the local village. Setting the stage for an intense and atmosphere rich character study of its lead character that slowly morphs into a drama thriller shining a light on the trials and tribulations of the third gender Kinnar community.
One of the most compelling aspects of Shah’s debut is his depiction of the Kinnar community and the role they play within south asian and hindu culture in particular. Within Hinduism Kinnars (also referred to as Hijras) are seen to have a connection to the divine , often being led by a guru, and financially surviving by providing blessings of prosperity, fertility and long life during births, weddings and other important life events. Shah uses the tension Pirati and the Kinnar community has with the village as a way to examine the transactional relationship between the majority and minority. How the community is only viewed in good standing by those that they serve when it is convenient, treated with respect and dignity only when they are seen as flawless models of divinity that only exist to provide blessings or act as the object of desire for some.
The moment their existence seeks to challenge or cause any disruption to how the villagers wish to perceive them, it becomes abundantly clear how conditional and transactional the respect these characters have from those around them. The Kinnar’s aren’t shown as flawless , our characters including Pirati struggle deeply with desire , ego and hypocrisy linked with the weight of the obligation that they hold and the strict rules they must follow including not engaging in their sexual desires.
In particular Pirati’s romantic desires towards a local drum master , who she seeks to run away to Dehli with , and Aspara’s (a younger member of the community) romantic feelings towards a married rickshaw driver whose wife receives blessings from Pirati. Shah manages to create what feels like a very honest portrait of a community linked through sisterhood and care , while not willing to shy away from the messiness caused by desire, infighting and religious devotion. These clashing ideas come to a head in a fantastic third act that culminates in a gut punch of an ending, one that has lingered many days since I finished the film.
While I do feel the film doesn’t quite manage to reach a balance between the joy and despair within the community, Shah’s unwillingness to shy away from the harder to swallow truths is what makes the film so compelling. It’s what makes Pirati’s character so magnetic to watch, there is no clear solution to her struggles, no right answer or easy way out. The weight of her motherly and spiritual obligation with her own genuine care for her daughters and her very real need to live a life she knows she deserves creates an incredibly layered character study. A character study that wouldn’t work without the fantastic performance from Pushpa Thing Lama who delivers one of this year’s most magnetic performances. There is such an honesty to her rage , pain , desire and joy that instantly sells the film’s emotional and narrative stakes. A performance that brings a level of organic roughness to the film that I do feel was missing from its form.
Formally Elephants lacks the bite that the narrative and performances bring, Shah does excels at creating a sombre mysterious tone and atmosphere as well as some incredibly striking images throughout – including a very clever use of costume design. However I found the film’s aesthetic qualities to be a tad generic, there is a growing arthouse co-production filmic style that has been taking over most of the festival circuit that causes some very interesting films to feel like their edges have been smoothed off. A very polished naturalistic style that makes for good visuals that lack a rawness to them that makes them stick with you on an emotional level. Some of the aesthetic choices do work with the film’s tone, particularly the use of darkness and cooler colour temperatures within the colour grade but for every choice that works I found myself frustrated by another. The overly shallow focus obscuring the landscapes and backgrounds dissolving the textures of the surroundings proved to be detrimental to the overall visual language of the film and works against how organic and natural the storytelling and performances are.
Overall, Abinash Bikram Shah delivers a debut that provides a very unique insight to an often unseen minority, never shying away from the harder truths regarding the transactional relationship the world has with the Kinnar community. Excelling particularly as fantastic character study into Pirati’s internal and external conflicts that manages to deliver an incredible ending even if the film struggles with a slightly too safe use of form.
