In “The Village House,” the four sides of the camera frame find beautiful, scenic spaces of space and time within the four walls of an ancestral home. Achal Mishra’s feature film debut, set in Madhopur, a village in the state of Bihar in eastern India, unfolds as a sort of autobiography – a decades-long portrait of the director’s family, drawn from childhood memories – as well as a biography of the residence that came before. him and whose legacy will survive him.
The film is divided into three chapters, set in 1998, 2010 and 2019. In the first, the sun-warmed house is buzzing with the activity of an extended family who come together to celebrate the birth of a child. The men play cards on a porch; the women fry potatoes in hot oil; the kids run around and pick mangoes.
As we move from one chapter to the next, the passage of time becomes subtly palpable, in the details. The house becomes emptier and worn out, deaths and illnesses are mentioned in passing and conversations become more and more nostalgic. By the end, the house is in disrepair and the residents have all either died or moved to the city. Instead of plot, the film collects rituals, traditions and memories, charting a wider arc of family change and emigration to the countryside.
With its patient lens and attention to textures, ‘The Village House’ often evokes the lengthy cinema of Tsai Ming-liang or Chantal Akerman, although Mishra’s compositions are more mannered. The film’s still, square footage feels so much like paintings that every stray movement—the smoke spiraling up from a mosquito coil, or a palm tree swaying in the wind—can seem magical, an image come to life.
The village hall
Not judged. In Maithili, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.