Sundance 2021: Fire in the Mountains

Ajitpal Singh's feature film debut, Fire in the Mountains, which he wrote and directed, is a sublime examination of the friction between tradition and modernity. It is a great deal more nuanced than that well-worn premise would suggest, allowing his characters, no matter their view, to feel fully three-dimensional as he examines how their steadfast views conflict with their commitment to, and love for, one another. Chandra (an extraordinary Vinamrata Rai), Dharam (Chandan Bisht), Dharam's sister Kamla (Sonal Jha), and their two children, Kanchan and Prakash (Harshita Tewari and Mayank Singh Jaira, respectively) all live in the same house, a small ancestral home passed down in Dharam's family nestled in the Himalayas in Uttarakhand Province. When the family takes the wheelchair-bound Prakash into town for a doctor's visit, the physician recommends physiotherapy, which becomes a source of financial pressure for the family. Simultaneously, after receiving guidance from his guru (a spiritual leader in the Hindu tradition) that he must perform a ritual sacrifice to help Prakash recover, Dharam objects strongly to Chandra's treks to the doctor, instead favoring ritual and prayer. This forms the central conflict of the film and Singh focuses, with great precision and compassion, on Chandra's struggle to sacrifice and endure to provide for her family and do the best she can for her son.

This is a story that could have easily dipped into caricature, in painting the oppressive husband as a pure and total oppressor. He is abusive and he is wrong, but Bisht, Rai, and Singh understand that, in undermining the core humanity of Dharam, they risk painting Chandra as a caricature, too, not a person struggling to do what's best for her family against a confused, scared, and oppressive tradition. And the film largely succeeds on the backs of its wonderful cast, especially the excellent Vinamrata Rai. Her performance here is warm, but determined and her arc is a believable and touching one. In her compassion and fierce dedication to her children, she reminded me greatly of my own mother and my grandmother. And, it is so refreshing to see a character who not only embodies the values—the love and commitment—of my mother, but who also looks like my mom, even if Chandra and her live half a globe apart. 

The story certainly recalls the Satyajit Ray film Devi, in spades, which tackles superstition, power dynamics, and how society often places women at the center of these forces for control. But, Singh's contemporary touch gives the film an immediacy it would otherwise lack. In a post-screening conversation, Singh noted that he had a family member go through a similar situation and was so jarred by its incongruence to his values and experiences in his own life that he wanted to explore those perspectives. His proximity to those who have experienced something similar shows in the believability and honesty with which his characters are written. This is not a story that stops to gawk at the backwardness of rural practices, but which contends with the humanity of his characters and their many paradoxes. How is it that Dharam is such a loving and silly husband in one scene, but an abusive monster in another? The answer lies in how Singh examines the forces—of tradition, of money, of family—that pressure Dharam into becoming something that seems such a remote possibility in the opening. And Chandra's arc is similarly expertly woven; she adapts to the pressures placed on her as a woman, as a mother, and as a wife to keep her children safe and healthy. I won't spoil where she ends up, but her arc leads her to a decision that feels both remote and perfectly understandable with the decisions she made along the way in retrospect. 

Singh has pulled off a delicate balance here, humanizing his characters, even as they do things that should make them simple, one-dimensional villains or heroes and breathes life into them fully and deeply. His film never takes for granted the humans that inhabit this tale. This is a wonderful feature debut and I eagerly await Singh's next project.