A review of Harishchandrachi Factory (dir. Paresh Mokashi, 2009)

It is not often that a biopic is at the same time a feel-good film, a comedy, a period film, a business film, and is critically acclaimed too. But Harishchandra… is all that and more! Phalke was a serial entrepreneur (in today’s lingo) and dabbled in printing presses and magic tricks. He watched a film for the first time in 1911 in British-ruled Bombay (now Mumbai), and immediately realized Indian films made for Indian audiences could have a massive audience. He set himself to learn all he could about the art and craft of filmmaking from reading film magazines.

Very soon he exhausts what he can learn while in India, and makes the brave decision to go to London to continue his education. He has no contacts there, but that does not deter him. He meets Cecil Hepburn, a British filmmaker, and assists him on set. Phalke comes back with a camera and a vision — to make India’s first feature film.

His journey requires much sacrifice from the Phalke family, who move from the downtown area of Girgaon to a bungalow in ‘the jungles of Dadar’, (today Dadar is a concrete jungle) so that he has the space to set up a studio. To get the money to go to London, he is forced to put up his insurance policies as security.

But the bigger challenges are from his community, and from society at large. His friends dissuade him from wasting his money, while other superstitious neighbours believe that the camera sucks up the life from a person being shot, and slowly kills her. His actors complain that their stock in the marriage market has dropped since they left the theater group and joined this unknown industry, while the ultimate irony is of prostitutes who do not want to join ‘the film industry because it has no respect!’

Watch out for the many silent films within the film, where Mokashi gives us a glimpse of how silent films played for audiences of the times. Phalke creates the very first ‘elevator pitch’ — a speeded up film of a single pea growing into a plant — to educate people of the power of film. You can also see the change in Phalke’s clothes, from dhoti to western clothes and back to dhoti, and how it interlinks with the story.

Harishchandrachi Factory remains, to my mind, one of the best films to be made in India in the past few years.

Harishchandrachi Factory is streaming on Netflix.

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A film appreciation of Harishchandrachi Factory

A film appreciation explores how the filmmaker uses the medium to tell her story. For example, the basic grammar of the written medium comprises metaphor, world-building, character building, and so on. A film also uses much of the same grammar, but the tools are both audio and visual. Appreciating a film would certainly cover the actors, but also the lighting, costume, makeup, camera angles, editing, architecture, and so on. In a period film, you could also consider how the period is captured, both in the sets and props, but also how the social and political climate of the time is reflected.

In Harishchandra…let us take up a couple of these and examine how the filmmaker uses them.

Lighting: the film is largely shot in the daytime, adding to the lightness and overall positive vibe of the film. The indoor shots are well lit, and show all the actors clearly. There are only two notable shots in the darkness, and both are used for cinematic effect. The first is when Phalke believes that he has gone blind, and staggers home holding onto his son for support. Phalke’s biggest worry is not about losing his eyesight, but who will take his vision of films forward. It is the only part of the film where the characters are truly disheartened, and the lighting reflects their mood. The lighting and mood changes in the next scene, when the doctor reassures him that he is not in danger of losing his eyesight.

The second scene shows the social climate of the time, and is not related to the story as such. After most of the household has gone to sleep, Phalke is pressing his wife’s legs as a lark. He has two colleagues with him, one filming Phalke and the other lighting up the scene with lanterns. Phalke’s wife suddenly wakes up and is immediately embarrassed on two counts: first that her husband is pressing her legs, and second because Phalke is filming the incident. Phalke then remarks, “This is the effect of [Maharshi] Karve”, who was a social reformer in the field of women’s welfare, and was active in that era.

The films within the film: Since the film is also about the making of a silent film, it is only fitting that the story of making one is told through silent films, atleast in part. They serve some other functions too. For one, Mokashi highlights the rich culture of music and musical plays in Indian theater by creating lovely background music to accompany the visuals. Secondly, he shows the modern viewer, who has never seen a silent film, just how easy it is to advance the story without the use of dialogue. These films are thus an exercise in the classic dictum of storytelling, “show, don’t tell.”