India has a culture with a long history of thousands of years. It is not only magnificent, colorful, complicated and mysterious, but Indian movies are its best carrier. Through different themes and styles, it is easy to show its heavy precipitation.
Every Indian movie is a new and exotic cultural journey for me, giving me all kinds of unprecedented experiences, such as the epic shock of "Bahubali King" and the full of imagination in "Betrayal for Love 2" The powerful action design, such as the open-minded novelty in "Dad 102 Years Old" and the strange logic under the ancient culture of "Toilet Hero", even the anti-China movie like "The Third World War" can Provide mirror-like reference to something that has never been seen in other films.
But when it comes to the mystery of Indian culture, I only felt it for the first time after watching the fantasy thriller "Tabad" recently.
(Serious spoilers in the later feature story)
The story takes place in a small village called Tabard in the British colonial period in 1918.
A legend has always been circulating in India.
In the universe, there is a god named the goddess of prosperity, a symbol of infinite gold and food, and the earth is her womb. When the universe was created, she also gave birth to 160 million gods, but her first child, Hasta, was her favorite.
However, the greedy Hasta is not satisfied with this favor, he wants to take all the gold and food of the goddess.
When he tried to obtain food after he managed to obtain the gold, all the other gods were enraged, and they gathered to attack Hasta, turning it into pieces. When it was almost destroyed, the goddess rescued Hasta, and he was forgotten forever by people, not worshipped, and always sleeping in his mother's womb.
However, the people in the small village of Tabad learned of Hasta from nowhere and built a temple for it.
Since then, Tabard has been in continuous rain all year round.
The protagonist Wiener’s mother is a widow. She took him and her brother to live a difficult life in Tabad alone. She gave a local noble old man a mistress for 12 years (the two children are the old man’s illegitimate children) and served him The purpose of taking care of Grandma Zeng, who has been confined for many years, is to extract the secrets of Hasta’s treasure from him, because he is said to be an insider.
However, the noble old man always repeats the sentence "Gold coins are for you to earn yourself". He has squandered all his ancestral properties and failed to find the treasure. However, he who is greedy for sensuality uses this as a bait and asks Wiener's mother to continue to provide it. Sexual service will eventually die.
Wiener mother and son inherited the manor of the noble old man, but they are still poor.
Wiener suggested that it is better to ask Granny Zeng about the whereabouts of the treasure, but she was rejected by her mother. She was responsible for taking care of this old lady all year round, thinking that Granny Zeng was a very dangerous person.
In an accident, Wiener's younger brother fell from a tree and injured his head. His mother hurriedly took him out for medical treatment.
Wiener, who was eager for money, tried to get close to Grandma Zeng. Unexpectedly, when he opened the door, he saw an old monster with a terrifying face, her mouth was fixed by a long nail, she rushed to Wiener frantically, acting extremely hungry. , Even planned to eat Wiener.
In desperation, Wiener remembered a spell her mother said when taking care of Granny Zeng: go to bed, otherwise Hasta will come to you! Grandma Zeng was stunned for an instant, and fell asleep before Wiener escaped.
The mother returned home with her seriously injured brother. She felt that it was her greed for the treasure that caused her youngest son to be cursed and decided to leave Tabard.
On the way away, Wiener missed the legendary treasure, and once again proposed to go back to find it. His mother scolded him for being greedy, and took out a gold coin from her arms and threw it on Wiener angrily.
This gold coin was the one held by the Hasta statue in the temple. Wiener looked at it with a fascinated expression.
Fifteen years later, the greedy Wiener returned to Tabard again. (It is estimated that the mother has passed away)
As he expected, Grandma Zeng was still alive. In that confinement hut, her body had dried up and almost died, her bare heart was still beating strongly, and she begged Wiener to burn herself to death. In exchange, she told Wiener the secret of the treasure.
Wiener finished taking care of grandma Zeng's funeral and returned home with gold coins as she wished.
Since then, he has returned to Tabard from time to time, and every time he can bring back some gold coins, sometimes only two, sometimes as many as a dozen. The increasingly wealthy Wiener led a luxurious life and also took care of his mistress. , For this reason, the family is often uneasy.
And these unidentified gold coins also aroused the covetousness of the merchants with whom they were dealing, and then quietly came to Tabard. Wiener, who had been aware of it, pretended to be ignorant, and came to the location of the treasure, a large well, taken from below. Gold coins, then left.
The vendor immediately went down to the well and found a huge stone treasure chest. After ecstatic, he opened the chest and found that there was no treasure in it, but a hole.
He followed the rope hanging from the entrance of the cave, slowly climbed in, and came to a weird cave.
The whole cave seems to have life, breathing and squirming all the time. The walls are fleshy bodies, full of blood vessels, and they are all red.
The vendor found a lunch box on the ground. After opening it, there was a human-shaped dough inside.
Just as he was puzzled, there was a terrible low growl around him, and a monster rushed towards him like lightning, biting him.
Afterwards, Wiener came to the cave again and staged a battle for gold coins in front of the painful remains of the vendors.
He sprinkled a circle with flour,
He took out a dough, and soon a skinny monster with a crown and jewels but no skin appeared, and looked straight at the dough in Wiener’s hands.
But he couldn't get close, because the flour ring isolated him.
Wiener threw the dough out of the circle, and the monster rushed over and gobbled it up. Wiener stepped out of the circle and opened the monster's pockets. Huang Cancan's gold coins instantly fell on the ground.
Wiener veteranly picked up a few at the fastest speed, and flexibly climbed up the rope when the monster was about to eat him after eating the dough. Seeing that he was about to be overtaken, Wiener crawled away from the cave in time and closed the stone treasure chest heavily.
At this point, the secret of Hasta’s treasure was finally solved.
That hole is the womb of the Goddess of Prosperity. The monster is Hasta. He didn’t get food at the beginning, so he was eager for food, so the dough can lure him out, and after he finished the dough, he wanted to eat people, but at the same time he did it again. Fear of food, so the flour ring can isolate him.
Anyone who has been bitten by Hasta will be cursed and become an immortal but always hungry freak.
Grandma Zeng was bitten by Hasta. After her accident, people in the family realized the danger of the treasure, nailed her mouth with a spike, hidden the secret of the treasure, and left the ancestral instruction "Gold coin is to Earn it by yourself" to warn future generations not to be greedy, but obviously this is useless.
The aristocratic old man has been tirelessly searching for treasures, and a lot of his age is still addicted to sensuality, all showing the blood of greed flowing in his body.
As his illegitimate child, Wiener undoubtedly inherited his greedy nature and appeared to be intensified. In order to obtain gold coins, he did not hesitate to take such a huge risk to get rid of the fire again and again.
As he grew older, Wiener began to gradually lose his energy. Although he had saved enough gold coins for a lifetime, he was still not satisfied, so he began to train his son to succeed.
After failing to withdraw gold coins one after another, Wiener took the risk and took his 15-year-old son on the road to Tabard.
Originally thinking of practicing hands first, but eager for quick success, the son brought the dough down, which attracted Hasta, and the father and son were in a panic. Fortunately, there was no danger, and the son picked up several gold coins. After returning home, he triumphantly flirted with Wiener's mistress.
Wiener was shocked that his son was even more greedy than himself.
But he has no time to reflect, because the independent government of India has been established, Tabard is about to be taken back, and the way of making money is about to be cut off. Wiener is distraught.
At this time, the son made a bold suggestion, it is better to bring a few more dough down, buy enough time, simply steal Hasta's pockets, and it will be done once and for all. Wiener, eager to preserve the source of wealth, accepted the proposal.
The father and son took a dozen pieces of dough and vowed to obtain Hasta's pockets.
However, when I came to the cave, I found that the situation was completely unexpected...The film also ushered in its most terrifying moment!
The most outstanding feature of this movie is that it successfully creates a strong atmosphere of weirdness and mystery.
First of all, this is due to its distinctive text. The whole story comes from a legend told by the director’s friends. Later, in the script creation, local horror stories were incorporated to create a plot full of Indian religious and cultural mystery, whether it is the goddess’ womb, Hasta’s pockets and the whole The mechanism and punishment for seizing gold coins are unique and mysterious. People can't help but feel awe of the long-standing religious civilization behind them.
The second is the unique image style of the film. Tabard is always a gray, damp, muddy, depressing and disturbing,
In the womb of the Goddess of Prosperity, the dazzling scarlet fills the entire picture, and the terrible Hasta and the yellow gold coins embellish it, giving people a complex emotion of desire and horror, shrouded in a weird In the atmosphere.
Furthermore, the film’s puzzle-solving narrative method (you can feel it from my spoilers) allows the secrets of Hasta’s treasure to progress layer by layer like peeling an onion, without revealing the whole picture until the end of the play, not only letting the story go Full of suspense, it also aggravated the mystery and weirdness of the entire film.
At the same time, the film abandons the usual song and dance interruptions, exaggerated interpretations, noisy and lengthy of Indian movies, and becomes cold, deep, and concise, forming a unified style that complements the whole story.
The director Rashiy was determined to make "Tabad" an "unprecedented in India" film. For this reason, he repeatedly revised it and filmed it for six years. The final result is also gratifying. At least I have seen such an Indian movie for the first time, and it is really great.
When it was screened at the Venice Film Festival, many audiences used "shocked" to describe their perception of the film. "The Times of India" described it as "gloomy and mysterious" and even commented that it is reminiscent of the classic Hollywood movies "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Rubber Head".
In contrast, the theme of the film seems general. It is basically a fable, admonishing people not to be greedy, otherwise they will pay a painful price. However, greedy people always feel that they can take a good measure to satisfy greed and return. Can be saved, and finally slide down the abyss step by step.
It's basically the old tune.
In the film, Tabard symbolizes desire, and the continuous rain symbolizes the endlessness of desire, that is, greed, and this greed is projected on every main character in the play and presented to varying degrees. Finally, They also received varying degrees of punishment.
The film was released in India in October 2018, and the reputation is very good. IMDb scored a high score of 8.4 and gained 135 million rupees. Compared with its production fee of only 5 crore rupees, this is definitely a commercial item. Very successful work.
At present, there has been news that "Tabad" will shoot a sequel.
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