Horror can be used as a tool to gauge a piercing insight into human anxieties, a sense of isolation, and above all, grief. Anvita Dutt’s 2022 psychological drama Qala holds up a mirror to misogyny through a neo-expressionist lens with its distorted shadows and angles. From Amit Trivedi’s music to Siddharth Diwan’s cinematography, Qala weaves a beautiful but harrowing and tragic tale of loss, grief, and desire that starts off in the snowy moors of Shimla and ends in a burnished manor of Calcutta.
Newcomer Babil Khan (Jagan) holds his own as Tripti Dimri (the titular Qala) and Swastika Mukherjee (Urmila) give heart-wrenching performances. Qala carries on with the legacy of social horror dramas Anushka Sharma (along with her brother Karnesh Ssharma) has been quietly championing with her production house Clean Slate Filmz (that has also produced Phillauri, Pari, and Bulbbul).
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How Qala Builds Its Walls
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Stylized with the symbol of Mercury ‘☿’ (a clue in itself) in place of the Q, the name of the film literally means art, except it is generally written with a ‘k’ when spelled in English. This stylization promptly evokes the word “qila” (meaning fortress in Arabic) to mind. A story full of broken yet guarded characters, piling on their ricocheting misery, is an apt and rather symbolic stand-in for both the words “kala” and “qila”. The pursuit of art and excellence may not always be the same, but they are both encumbered with a sense of resounding insulation that can drive the pursuer delirious.
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The story begins “in media res” aka “in the middle of things”. We get a glimpse into the psyche of our protagonist Qala through a series of interspersed flashback scenes. Born in the middle of winter in the 1920s, Qala survives her twin, a tragedy her mother Urmila never gets over. Urmila raises Qala to carry on the legacy of her father, a classical music maestro, a birthright that ideally her son would have carried on with if he were alive.
But this is no tale of a feminist mother rising against social odds to raise a fearsome daughter. This is the story of a broken woman domineering and denting the very core of her daughter’s identity leaving her jaded and craving for her mother’s validation all her life.
Swastika Mukherjee plays Urmila with perfection. Her probing disapproval and hauntingly stony demeanor fill the air whenever Qala tries to emerge looking for warmth and tenderness. Urmila stops betting on her daughter the moment she comes across Jagan, an orphan who also happens to be a gifted singer destined to fulfill the dream she wanted her son to achieve. Jagan becomes Urmila’s de facto son from that moment on, and to her, Qala melds into the background. In a bid to gain her mother’s acceptance, Qala charts out a path with no way back.
At the time we are introduced to Qala, she has already become a distorted version of herself. In the 1940s, Qala becomes the industry’s darling. She achieves every dream her mother had for her brother/Jagan, but her journey becomes a ghoulish metaphor for what it means to be a woman in a world that wanted her to do nothing but shrink.
The Symbolism and Quiet Feminism of Qala
The very first time we meet Qala, we actually do not see her at all; we see the bright reflection of the sun on her award (the one she believes will finally win over Urmila). As she stands on the balcony posing for the cameras and her fans, her face slowly becomes visible, looking warped. Every time she sees herself in a mirror, the reflection is always somehow disfigured, underlining the destruction of her sense of self-identity.
The occurrences of mazes (in the form of her home’s manicured backyard bushes as well as the toy that Jagan gave her) along with the shadows of a carousel when they talk about what music means to them, right after Swanand Kirkire, Shahid Mallya, Sireesha Bhagavatula’s “Bikharne Ka Mujhko Shauq Hai Bada” (“I Enjoy Falling Apart”) plays out under the moonlight, only highlights how circumstances will continue to thrust them together and apart. On the merry-go-round of life, there is no stopping or getting off without getting hurt.
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The constant misty atmosphere and the gothic gorgons framing Qala every time she is about to do something she can never take back draws in our claustrophobia. A trippy party sequence, where she emerges as the black swan right before Sant Kabir’s rendition of the Avadhuta Bhajan “Udh Jaayega Hans Akela” (The Swan Will Fly Away Alone), signals Qala’s tipping point. From then on it is a gradual descent for Qala, which she misconstrues as her ascent. In another shrouded revelatory moment, Qala’s shadow resembles Quasimodo’s, the great hunchback, as she creeps along to check on Jagan failing to impress his patrons as she had devised.
In his pivotal portrayal of Jagan Bantwal, Babil Khan leaves an indelible impression. In a film about legacies, Khan follows in his late father Irrfan Khan’s footsteps in a somewhat strange way and becomes the very soul (rooh) and conscience of the story. Irrfan’s Roohdaar (the soulful) in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider was steeped in very similar hues and to date remains one of his most memorable appearances on film.
With all the coffins being buried, symbolic doors closing on her, and shadowy bars imprisoning her, Qala gets engulfed in flames ignited by her sorrow much like her chosen motif of the moths. Even though she surrounds herself with an army of women, resolute in their quiet camaraderie and sisterhood, Qala’s life slowly devolves into a chaotic and swirling storm of snow. She survives every abuse, but succumbs to their inescapable trauma. Grief compounds. Over time, it leaves Qala buried beneath expectations and desires that were never even hers to begin with.
Qala is currently streaming on Netflix.
