a QISSA of confusion.

They say the mystery and eccentricity of folktales is something that always remains with you. As a child I don’t remember questioning Bikram and Baital or any of their 25 tales. But today, I do find myself wondering what the fuss about

the 110 minutes of Qissa is.

Set against the backdrop of Punjab, Qissa is the story of a father and his child. Umber Singh (Irrfan Khan) obsessed with his desire for a male child, decides to bring his fourth daughter (Shome) up as a boy. Along the way he’s successful in depriving the mother (Chopra) of a voice and a conscience, and through the years, he manages to cheat the other sisters and the entire village about  Kanwar’s chromosomes.

As Qissa progresses we get pulled into the dark twisted undercurrent of a fathers sick persistence of believing the daughter to be a son and in turn, her mental struggle to live up to the fathers expectations by defying all odds to play being something she’s not.

To be honest, it is but a story, unreal, and that which defies logic or mathematics. Given that, I sat through, wanting to know how the delusional father dealt with Kanwars puberty, no facial hair, questions about peeing in the open, breasts, or falling for a girl. At some point I was expecting Kanwar to break down burdened by her true identity, but what further perplexed me was a marriage, the fathers incestuous behavior to ensure a male legacy and an indistinct conclusion to the Qissa.

 

Unfortunately, what emerged was the feeling of listening to a bored child, weaving a story as he went along.  A lot many said this was not a film to think about rationally, the story was as captivating as was the acting, and that one would just be riveted in the tale.

Is that the criteria then for mass hysteria and global awards?

 Take a Paheli, for instance, even though a tale about a spirit, but the lack of logic  was made up with some mathematics.

Despite loosing it’s path in parts, and the screenplay dragging a bit, have to give it to Anup Singh and Madhuja Mukherjee for being brave to experiment. Brilliant performance by Dugal. Shome came around towards the end, Khan and Chopra had no challenge.  

Through the film I was disturbed about how a story of female oppression completely left a mother’s point of view out, the character was so inconsistent and conveniently disappeared from the screenplay at all times when her presence would have created a fork in the story.

Is this what got the foreign markets to sit up and take note? There is a lot more to story telling and to India.

The end did leave me haunted, wondering a little and confused some more. I do not however, take that as the objective of the film and yet success.