Om Puri was seen in a very unusual English-language film titled The Hangman directed by debutant Vishal Bhandari. Subhash K Jha looks back at the drama, which clocks 15 years on February 5th.
Said Om, “It’s about the turmoil of a hang-man. It’s a somber film about a man who doesn’t want his son to be a hangman. My son finally ends up in the gallows. We all know how tough it was for them to find a hangman for the recent execution of that boy for rape and murder in Kolkata. My character portrays the stress and drama of being in the most thankless job on this earth. It’s not an entertaining film by any means. But it’s a very powerful film.”
Om Puri, playing a character apparently inspired by real life, is in emotional form as the doting dreaming father of an earnest son who, stereotypically, is spoilt and ruined by the Big Bad City. The opposition of values between rural and city life is done with a simplistic yet sincere flourish. The story could’ve been done with a less pedantic treatment. The characters are almost parabolic. The hangman Shiva’s wife is named Parvati and played with a clipped accent and eyebrows to match by Smita Jaykar, and the son, believe it or not, is named Ganesh! There begins the tormenting tandav on migration from the villages and its ruinous aftermath. There’s a touching core to Shiva’s hopes of getting his son out of the noose into a world of prosperity. This side of the plot needed further nurturing and irrigation. The father-son sequences, as played out by Puri and Talpade, convey a wealth of warmth, sadly melted down by outdated values and narrative devices.
By the time the narration moves clumsily into city life to show the urban corruption of the poor rustic Ganesh, it embraces naivete wholesale, abandoning any deeper thoughts for a surface-level exploration of the relationship between ambition and guilt. And portraying the city girl (Amrita Bedi) as a toxic influence is the last straw.
In case the director hadn’t noticed the villages have moved and merged into the cities. The city-rural divide is only a mindset now.
Tackling a concept that is thoroughly outdated The Hangman never proceeds beyond conveying the mood and modality of a serious high-school morality- play performed with touching earnestness. It’s the sincerity of Om Puri and Shreyas Talpade’s performances that place this film a peg or two above the trite level. If we add Gulshan Grover’s acting as an upright jailor, The Hangman is a bearable depiction of a rustic family’s dreams gone to seed.
