I watched Jugnuma: The Fable today, and I was left speechless. When I went into this film, all I knew was that it had the classic Japanese 16mm film vibe, one of the best cinematography in Indian cinema of the decade starring Manoj Bajpayee. All this was enough for me to dive into it and to be honest, everything fore mentioned was delivered far better than what I had expected.
Cinematography-wise, it is a masterpiece. Every frame of the film gives an old winter vibe that is chilling yet beautiful, you don’t want to blink. Honestly, I had never thought that the mountains of Himachal could be shown in such a cinematic way. It is beyond words to describe their beauty.
Manoj Bajpayee delivered what he always does, another masterclass added to his filmography. All the other actors Deepak Dobriyal, Tillotama Shome, Priyanka, and Hiral Sidhu have played their roles with exceptional depth. Hats off to the director, Raam Reddy, for extracting such disciplined and moving performances from these brilliant actors.
Now, talking about the story it had a mystic setting to it that created uneasiness from the very beginning. You see everything going fine, but there is something unsettling. It cannot be seen, but it is felt. The story revolves around the fire caused in the arcade of Dev. The characters try to figure out who really caused the fire, but it was just the surface of the story. Beneath lies a deeper, almost eternal meaning that the film slowly pours into us. We don’t even realize when we get filled with it, and by the end, we are left with an unsettled heart. We know the film has ended, but something still continues inside us.
Is he really an angel? Who started the fire? What is that old tale? How are pesticides harming nature? These are the questions we are left with. If I speak honestly, even I don’t know all the answers. Maybe the film means different things to different people and that’s what makes fable storytelling unique. It is simple on the surface, yet deep and symbolic at the same time. We get lost in its simplicity, and when the film ends, we are left with questions, questions that are never directly asked, but created in our minds.
I’ll finish by saying this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you can only understand after watching it. Everything literally everything in this film is a masterpiece. This is cinema that does not spoon-feed the audience; it makes us think. Was he an angel? Were they angels?
This film shows that not everything is going wrong in our industry. There are still creators who crave and love cinema. Not everyone is chasing the big box office some just want to create. They don’t care about collections; they care about expressing what they truly feel. As an audience, it is our responsibility, my responsibility to appreciate cinema and the people who love it.