We interviewed Raam Reddy, who presents another personal tale on India’s society, using magical realism elements from his background as a novelist to construct another multi-layered film about mysterious fires on the mountain side.
After the success of Raam Reddy’s first feature, Thithi, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and won the First Feature Film Award in 2015, it was a no brainer that his follow up, The Fable would be one of the more anticipated films presented in the Encounters section at the 74th Berlinale.
Telling the story of a wealthy family on the mountainside, sudden and mysterious fires begin to blaze upon their orchid farms. Creating a vast ecosystem of India’s society (upper-class, orchid workers, police, and nomads), Raam approaches the many sub-groups’ interactions and mysticism through magical realism between the fiery catastrophe and interplay among each other set in the mountainside.
Through mystery and open playfulness, Raam accomplishes a poetic journey into India’s colonized past, tradition, and hierarchy. Focusing on the patriarch, Dev (Manoj Bajpayee), he discovers one of his small orchid trees burnt. Days later, more and more soon are blazed, leading him to investigate the fires behind this. Mixing investigative storytelling with magical realism, The Fable reveals much more than meets the eye, where social groups clash, questioning logic, bringing a cinematic tale of reality and the unworldly.
In addition to our review and interview with lead actor Manoj Bajpayee, we had the great pleasure to sit down and talk with Raam about his second feature at Berlin.
Michael Granados: It’s been almost 10 years since your last film Thithi. Why the long period in between Thithi and The Fable?
Raam Reddy: A lot of things happened. To put a film like this together in India is a challenge. For example, the casting took a bit of time. I had such a wonderful star cast and at the same time, there were a lot of non-actors in the mountains I needed to train. We wanted to shoot in the middle of nowhere, during a specific season lasting 2-3 weeks long, and shoot on film! There was the pandemic as well! It was very much a hand-crafted journey, taking it one step at a time.
Michael Granados: Why did you decide to shoot on 16mm film this time around?
Raam Reddy: Firstly, it was set in 1989 and it was the medium of the time and I wanted to create that authenticity. Secondly, I believe film has a personal quality. I believe in the transfer of the subconscious which film captures in a different way digital does. The relationship of the light we created interacting with real chemicals and atoms is a transformative experience. That process creates the aura and rigor, from the grain shifting frame to frame, leaving myself and the whole team hanging on a thread.
“You can use words to create imagination, but sound and visuals make it complete.”
Michael Granados: Where did the idea for The Fable and the film’s conception start from?
Raam Reddy: I was very keen to make this film. My first film was something that I’ve seen and existed in, so I translated it to something cinematic in Thithi.
I went to the mountains initially for 3 months. I do this a lot. I go to a setting that suits my scene and I allow the setting to give what it wants. One of the first things I did there was fight a forest fire. I built my story there organically. In my own heart I have a certain affinity, but I let life filter through that affinity in the outline stage. I take the things that resonate, then I get that narrative thread which was the fire. It allowed me to build things, excite me, and play with the structure. That is the skeleton, the blood flowing through it, the limbs, the spinal cord, and begins to form into a narrative. It’s an ecosystem of back and forth.
For the whole magical element, I was interested in that “something more” feeling. I was always attracted to the relationship between reality and fiction. The film is treated quite realistically, so I wanted to use magic to expand the feelings I wanted to capture, using the opposite narrative thread (magic).
There were very specific notes I wanted to hit on the story. If you want to hit notes, you need control. With professional actors, I could create new characters to have them do what I want them to do. With non-professional actors, I inherit their personalities. My job was to find actors who were transformative enough to create the illusion of reality within my fiction.
Michael Granados: I’m interested to hear more about the different subgroups of India’s society you wanted to portray. Can you talk about your approach to the interplay between each other?
Raam Reddy: One thing was to separate the family from the British colonizers. I don’t blame this family for the colonizer’s past, they inherited it. I wanted to have a cross sectional society and play with the circles between the rich family, workers, nomads, and police.
I wanted to create this ambiguity and pose questions about the central conflict of the fires between these different sub-groups. You have to be open to allow film to guide this journey where it’s going to go.
Michael Granados: Since your background before cinema was writing novels, what made you transition into filmmaking?
Raam Reddy: Before I wanted to become a filmmaker, I was interested in all aspects of filmmaking. I started as a poet, then I moved into photography. I had a photography exhibition when I was 16. From there, I moved to sound and music. Then I moved to economics because that’s what you do in India.
I had a subject of Economics of History in India from 1850-1900s and I realized there I didn’t want to become an Economist. I was trying to figure which profession I wanted to do instead and filmmaking encapsulated all my ongoing interests.
It’s such a magical medium. There’s nothing quite like it. It brings all these things together. You can use words to create imagination, but sound and visuals make it complete. It’s a much more complete medium.
