A Death in the Gunj
Synopsis:
Gulshan Devaiah is aggressively mocking poor Shutu in front of everyone at the dinner table while Kalki Koechlin just looks completely exhausted by the sheer amount of toxic masculinity radiating off her vacation companions.
Honestly, A Death in the Gunj is not your typical high-energy Bollywood flick with massive dance numbers and guys punching fifty villains at once, because Konkona Sen Sharma's directorial debut in the realm of hindi movies is actually a deeply unsettling psychological drama about fragile male egos crumbling in a quiet, sleepy colonial bungalow in McCluskieganj back in late 1979.
Let's rewind a bit to how this whole disaster trip actually starts, which involves a family station wagon packed to the absolute brim with Omi, his cousin Shutu played by Chandram Bhagat, and the older family friend Sam driving everyone crazy with his loud opinions and endless bullying.
They arrive at the sprawling, dusty ancestral house where Bakshi and Anupama live, and right away you can tell that Shutu is the designated punching bag of the family, a sensitive college kid who failed his physics exam and just wants to sketch and read, while the older men treat him like total garbage under the guise of character-building banter.
And then boom, the local trip keeps going with everyone hanging out, drinking way too much local booze, and heading down to a river picnic where Sam acts like a massive jerk by bullying a local man and forcing Shutu to swim in freezing, dangerous water just to prove his manhood, which is honestly super hard to watch.
Let me just pause for a second to complain about how this movie completely skips the traditional interval block because there's no catchy song or dramatic cliffhanger where the bad guy twirls his mustache, and instead the film just keeps rolling through quiet, simmering tension while characters whisper behind each other's backs on creaky wooden porches.
Speaking of background props, I cannot stop obsessing over this one hideous floral armchair in the living room that looks like it survived a direct nuclear blast from the seventies, and honestly, every time it's on screen, I just stare at its horrible mustard-yellow cushion patterns instead of listening to the dialogue about local property disputes.
Stuff happens and a bunch of guests arrive, including Bonnie and her husband, plus Mimi played by Kalki who brings this chaotic, flirtatious energy that completely short-circuits Sam and drives poor Shutu utterly crazy because he's secretly totally infatuated with her, especially after they share this weird, intense moment smoking on the roof under the stars.
And then in a single rushed afternoon, Mimi casually rejects Shutu's awkward romantic advances after hooking up with Sam instead, and Shutu's entire internal world basically shatters into a million tiny, unfixable pieces right there in the dusty bedroom.
Things get super weird and dark during a night hunt where Sam accidentally or maybe purposefully shoots a local dog, and everybody just acts super casual about it like animal cruelty is just another fun hobby for bored rich guys on holiday in these obscure hindi films.
Shutu becomes more and more isolated, wandering around the spooky old house while the adults ignore his obvious mental breakdown, and nobody even notices when he sneaks away into the back room with Sam's loaded hunting rifle.
Shutu puts the barrel of the gun into his mouth and pulls the trigger, ending his life in sudden, horrifying silence.
Gulshan Devaiah is wearing a shirt that looks itchy just to look at, which is half the battle when you are playing a certain type of casually cruel man in a specific kind of Hindi film. He is lounging on a porch in McCluskieganj during a 1979 winter holiday that has gone completely sideways, though nobody quite realizes how badly until the dead animal shows up. Konkona Sen Sharma directs this thing with a sort of suffocating slowness that makes you want to check your watch, only to realize only four minutes have passed and you are still trapped in that living room with all those sweating relatives passing around plates of tasteless food. It is the kind of debut where you can practically smell the stale cigarettes and damp curtains, which is impressive since I was watching it on a laptop screen with a fan that buzzes whenever the CPU gets hot.
The script doesn't give Chandram Bhagat very many lines as Shutu, the quiet boy who can't seem to do anything right, but Bhagat doesn't need dialogue when his shoulders are doing all that heavy lifting. He hunches over books and stammers when someone asks him a direct question, shrinking away from the toxic masculinity radiating off his older cousins like heat off a tin roof. There is a scene where they force him to ride a horse he clearly hates, and the camera just stays on his face while he tries not to cry, and if I am honest, it reminded me of that dreadful afternoon I spent at my uncle's shooting range pretending I wasn't terrified of the kickback. Devaiah and Kalki Koechlin play the couple from the city with a bored, casual cruelty that feels entirely lived-in, treating Shutu less like a human being and more like a piece of furniture that keeps getting in the way.
It's a small thing but it bugged me how often they reuse that one acoustic guitar motif on the soundtrack, because once you notice the plucking, you hear it under every single conversation about old times and missed trains. Still, the cinematography by Sirsha Ray captures the hazy, sun-bleached monotony of an Indian hill station where time has stopped working properly, framing the dilapidated bungalows against vast empty skies that feel less picturesque and more like an open cage. You can feel the dust in your teeth. You can feel the heavy, oppressive afternoon heat that makes everyone too tired to be decent to one another, retreating instead into passive-aggressive remarks and cruel little jokes told at Shutu's expense while the adults drink scotch and talk about politics.
We have seen plenty of movies about repressed bourgeois families falling apart at the seams, particularly in Bengali cinema stretching back through Satyajit Ray and right up to Aparna Sen, but this one has a specific kind of casual rot that feels distinctly modern even though the calendar says 1979. The men are constantly asserting dominance over each other through petty trivia contests and hunting stories, while the women navigate the kitchen with tight smiles and endless patience that hides a bottomless well of exhaustion. Nobody shouts very much. The violence here is entirely atmospheric, born of neglect and casual humiliation rather than grand dramatic confrontations, which makes the ending hit you somewhere in the ribs when you aren't paying attention.
By the time the family dog starts barking at things in the dark, the film has built a claustrophobic tension that rivals The Conversation, even if the stakes here are nothing more grand than hurt feelings and ruined holidays. Shutu wanders through the woods like a ghost who hasn't quite figured out he has already died, ignored by everyone except the younger cousin who looks up to him with a heartbreaking, misplaced trust that only makes his eventual breakdown feel even more inevitable. It is a miserable sort of vacation where nobody is having any fun, yet everyone keeps pretending they are having the time of their lives because that is what you do when you are part of a family that values appearances above all else. You smile for the Polaroid camera while the person standing next to you is slowly losing their mind, and then you pack your bags and take the morning train back to Calcutta like nothing happened.