‘The Spark’: Busan Review

Dir/scr: Rajesh S. Jala. India. 2023. 98mins

The northern Indian city of Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, has been a recurring muse for filmmaker Rajesh S. Jala. After profiling various aspects of the holy city, which has a central place in Hindu traditions of pilgramage, death and mourning, in documentaries like Cradle By The Stream, the award-winning Children Of The Pyre and At The Stairs, Jala returns to it in hybrid feature The Spark, which follows a fictional filmmaker encountering real-life inhabitants of Varanasi. There is, however, little creative glow to be found here.

Things play out flatly, without much emotional heft or political depth.

Selected at the Screenwriters Lab Goa, it also travelled to Cinemart Rotterdam and FilMart’s HAF. Also supported by Busan, the Asian Contents and Film Market and Asian Cinema Fund, The Spark is now competing in Busan’s New Currents section. There is, however, little freshness and even a sense of fatigue when it comes to the portrayal of both Varanasi and India’s most famous cremation ground the Manikarnika Ghat. It doesn’t have the emotional tug and flair and narrative heft of recent international successes set in Varanasi—like Masaan or Hotel Salvation. 

In the same way as Children Of The Pyre, much of the The Spark takes place in Manikarnika, and focuses on the real-life character of Durga (Durga Prasad Choudhary), who helps light the pyres. Another real-life character is Amma (Bhagirathi Devi), who waits for death and salvation and prays to the Lord Of Crematorium to release her from the cycle of life and death. Capturing them on his camera is fictional reclusive filmmaker Kabir (Puneet Saraswat), who roams the ghats (the terraced riverbanks) in search of characters for his latest project.

Yet this is not just a film about Varanasi and its people. Haunted by the recording of a violent lynching incident, Kabir is actually on a mission under the guise of his filmmaking. He is out to wreak havoc in the holy city for a crime committed against the Muslim minority community by the aggresive right wing Hindutva forces.

The backdrop of Varanasi is where the documentarian in Jala comes to the fore, with the city’s real-life denizens like Durga and Amma not only turned into the film’s dramatis personae but also captured in a naturalistic mode. Some of the sequences, however, also come with an overriding sense of déjà vu. As in Children Of The Pyre, there is talk of the recycling and reselling of shrouds among the crematorium workers and of bodies that take too long to burn due to water retention. 

In the fictional side of the film which is Kabir’s violent mission, Jala tries to shine a light on the recent incidents of intolerance and hate crimes against the Muslim communitiy, purportedly for trading in beef or in the name of ‘Love Jihad’; a conspiracy theory about Muslim men feigning love in order to convert Hindu women to Islam. The message is not just that such violence is abhorrent, but it only breeds further alienation and animoisty. Yet while Jala makes a novel attempt to blend docudrama with fiction, the hybrid element rests uneasily – both in terms of his filmmaking craft as well as the issues that the film sets out to highlight. Things play out flatly, without much emotional heft or political depth.

Unlike Varun Chopra’s documentary Holy Cowboys, about young cow vigilantes, Anurag Kashyap’s short film Four Slippers, which probes the psyche of a hardline Hindu believer, or Harshad Nalawade’s IFFR outing Follower, which explores the radicalisation of a young Hindu, The Spark keeps the Hindutva fanaticism implicit, heard on TV news ad nauseum. What it does foreground is the further hatred that their acts can beget in the Muslim community. Yet, far from an authentic, subtle or probing portrayal, the shadowy villain (Sanjay Suri) guiding Kabir towards violence seems straight out of some Bollywood or Hollywood terror drama.

The sights and sounds of Varanasi are crucial in juxtaposing the ritualistic, spiritual side of death against its brutal aspects, with the persistent prayers playing off against the calls to kill. But there is also a distinct deliberateness here, with scenes sometimes coming across as overly arranged or repetitive. The same shots appear in a loop, as does the same philosophical song about virtues and sins. There is a conscious attempt to capture the majesty of Varanasi along with its more mundane and messy aspects, best highlighted in the shots of the grafitti of the Hindu god Shiva seen through the glass window of a café. While the glass reflects the image of Kabir alongside Shiva in the backdrop, the business of life carries on along the narrow street—in between the mosquito spray and the flying balloons, workers ferrying iron rods cross paths with those carrying the dead on their last journey to the Hindu ritualistic chants of “Ram naam satya hai (Ram is the only truth)”.

The presence of Amma is like a plot point than a full-blown character, while Puneet Saraswat’s far-away, vacant look and strategic tears do not convincingly convey Kabir’s turmoil. It is the straight-faced Durga’s rough and tough ways, native intelligence, blunt talk, colourful curses, sullen sense of humour and candid ease with the camera that hold the viewer’s interest – especially when he talks of ants being trampled upon by humans and the powerless being crushed by the powerful. He captures the essence of the film and the overarching question: Varanasi is where people might seek individual salvation, but how can we seek social, political and communal deliverance for the sins committed against humanity in the name of religion?