Writer-director Mitul Patel’s Mercy, which open in India on 24 April, peels away gently into the complexities of euthanasia to tell the unadorned story of a conflicted family, with grace and sensitivity. The storytelling is deficient in the quality of vigour. But there is enough unfudged drama here to keep us involved in this family’s existential crisis even when writing hits a hurdle.
The drama unfolds on Christmas Eve, conferring the ambiance with a festive tranquillity which contrasts with the dilemma of a family losing its matriarch after she slips into a coma.
To pull the plug or not, that is the question. The actors are all unexposed in this part of the world and are therefore convincing in their characterizations. Raj Vausudeva, who also produces the film, fits in efficiently as the conflicted elder son, Shekhar, burdened by family responsibilities, mainly a rudderless younger brother, Vihaan (Kunal Bhan), whom, in a smartly set-up scene at the outset, Shekhar firmly refuses money to fund another reckless scheme.
To compound the conflict, Shekhar’s good-natured wife Jiya(Niharica Raizada) announces her pregnancy. For the expectant mother, the mood is that of solitary struggle.
The dinner sequence that follows (what would cinema be without the whining at the dining table?) brings the family’s simmering discontent . The screenwriting brings the ties beneath the tensions out in the open.
But once one of the family members slips into a coma, the writing begins to feel flattened out, as if the characters are not really up to the task of handling the situation, not for the want of emotions, but an absence of motivation.
Watching a loved one die and taking the hard decision to let her go, are not easy screenwriting tropes. Mercy does well to let the characters speak for themselves. Everyone gets ample room to breathe, though they never get to the point of intuitive salvation that they aspire to.
The film keeps its duration brief . Distractions, such as the young singing beggar pretending to be blind, blunder into the plot. As long as the writer-director restricts her characters’ emotional wanderings, Mercy works well enough.
Not to expect thundering drama and enrapturing emotions , would be a sensible cautionary when watching Mercy. At a time when Harish Rana’s mercy death plays on the nation’s mind , Mercy reminds us how cinema can prod us into looking at life through wide-eyed lenses.
