Is ‘Pihu’ the most disturbing film in Bollywood history?
As most Bollywood fans focused on Thugs of Hindostan, an award-winning film hitting cinemas this weekend has slipped under the radar. Pihu is the story of a two-year-old girl alone at home – and surely the almost eight million people who have watched the spinetingling trailer will be curious about the movie, but many say they will not be able to watch it, as they are too worried for the child.
The film’s writer-director Vinod Kapri’s candid message to a potential audience is: please do not watch it if you feel this way after seeing the trailer. And he must really mean it, because he has a lot invested in people watching this film: he spent three years of his life making it.
“It is not a horror movie, but it is scary and they may not be able to watch it. It is not for the fainthearted,” Kapri said last week in an interview with Filmibeat.com. He says the film is a social thriller.
A former television journalist, Kapri took the plunge, quit his job and made his first feature, Miss
Tanakpur Haazir Ho, in 2015. The critically acclaimed picture received appreciation from veterans such as Amitabh Bachchan and directors Rajkumar Hirani and Madhur Bhandarkar.
Despite the response to that movie, Kapri struggled to finance his next project, and so Pihu was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. “I didn’t have money, so I decided to make a movie on this girl where Pihu is the only protagonist. I reduced the budget further from three to four crores (Dh30 to 40 million) to just one, but still there were no takers for the unusual subject,” Kapri tells The National. “Kirshen Kumar agreed to foot 60 per cent, but then he passed away and I did not have the money to market the movie.”
Pihu, in many ways, shows Kapri’s skills for adaptation and marketing. The director took his brainchild to film festivals, and after Vancouver, it was slotted in as the opening act at India’s biggest festival in Goa last year, where it won accolades and attention from Siddharth Roy Kapur, who brought on board Ronnie Screwvala – both heavyweights in the entertainment business. “Goa was a lifeline for me,” Kapri says. “I had started working on my next project when things started rolling again on this one.” The flip side of big producers coming on board is that the movie is not without its share of controversy. As part of the marketing campaign, people started receiving calls where a girl’s distressed voice speaks out before being disconnected abruptly. When they called back to help, the trailer link and movie information was sent to them. This invited the wrath of many.
Kapri defends those behind the strategy: “I know it could have been upsetting, but I understand the view of the marketing team. What’s the point of making this film, and why will people come if no one knows about it? Let’s face it, I don’t have a big star cast.”
The film has been submitted to Guinness World Records as the only film with the only character played by a two-year-old – it is being touted as one of a kind. If the feat is recognised, that would be just reward for Kapri, who has gone through meticulous planning, shooting and then post-production in three years to deliver a film that is only 100 minutes long.
Pihu is based on a true life incident from New Delhi in 2014, where a child was stuck at home with dead parents. “I could have told the story from a parent’s perspective, but I chose to tell it from [the child] Pihu’s point of view.
“It was not easy because I cannot make a child act. I had cameras all over the place and let her act in daily life. I spent two months with her, just becoming part of the family.”
Even the crew stayed for two weeks in the small flat of Myra Vishwakarma, who plays Pihu, when she was two years and five months old. “I met Myra when she was one year, 10 months. I spent a lot of time just befriending her. When the crew came over, we introduced each member as paternal uncle, maternal aunt … relations that she would recognise as her own.
“Everything used on the sets – right from the home to her own clothes and toys, even the furniture like water heater etc – is from the Vishwakarma household.”
The much-talked-about trailer ends with Pihu perched precariously on her balcony. “Without giving much away, there was an ending I had in mind and we shot, but during the process, we realised Myra in her personal domain had a habit of going to the balcony and calling out loudly to people. She loves to talk from there randomly. So we changed that to what you see in the trailer.”
Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho was satirical, while Pihu is being touted as a social thriller. And while the latter has had some credit at film festivals, it will ultimately have to rely on word-of-mouth testimonials after its release today to see success. We will have to wait and see.
It is not a horror movie, but it is scary and people may not be able to watch it. It is not for the faint-hearted
VINOD KAPRI
Director, ‘Pihu’