‘Elham' Is a Gently Stirring Film About a Rural Muslim Family

The Wire

01-05-2025

Despite its formulaic predictability, Hindi film industry periodically offers young and promising voices that leave you surprised by the freshness of their aesthetics. One such entrant is Dhruva Harsh, who has garnered significant attention for his unconventional, offbeat films. In 2023, he made Elham , a film that has been earning critical acclaim since then. The movie premiered in Allahabad in December 2024, drawing a packed audience in the Gautam cinema hall.
Offbeat films often struggle to attract large crowds, but the film's sensitive subject matter and the filmmaker's approach resonated deeply with viewers. The story revolves around a Muslim family in Awadh – a man, his wife, their two children, a grandfather and a goat. The children endearingly name the goat Dodu, and it soon becomes an integral part of their world. It arrives at their home when the father makes a quilt for a kind-hearted woman, who in turn gifts the poor family a goat for ceremonial sacrifice.
As Eid approaches, the family prepares for the ritual sacrifice of the goat, only to lend a melancholia to the bond between the children, Faizan and Fatima, and Dodu, who no longer remains an animal to them. When the day of sacrifice comes closer, Faizan – supremely portrayed by Toyo Chan in a way that reminds of Abbas Kiarostami's masterpieces that feature child artists – finds himself anguished. He runs away into the forest with Dodu. Eventually, following a tumultuous climax, the father Rafiq decides against the sacrifice.
And if one thought that the poor family would now be deprived of meat on the festival, a stranger mysteriously arrives to deliver meat, with a cryptic message: 'The Master has sent it.' Precisely at this moment, the movie comes to blend faith, love and divinity in ways more profound that the reviewer here can define.
Elham stands out for its artistic subtleties and stunning visual appeal. The depiction of water splashes, blooming flowers and an Eidgah set amidst mango orchards transports viewers to the serene rural landscape of Awadh. It not only enhances the aesthetics but, more importantly, also lends an authentic cultural backdrop to the narrative, immersing the audience in the rhythm of a pastoral Muslim life. The young cinematographer, Ankur Rai, wields his camera with finesse, making his chosen frames an integral part of the story.
But what makes it noteworthy for our times is the poignant portrayal of a Muslim family tottering on the edge of poverty. The movie does talk about absurdities of faith which makes it obligatory upon a family to look for an animal for sacrifice, a family that can barely fill its own kitchen. The movie talks about the entrenched caste system in a religion that professes to be egalitarian, as the young Rafiq, a member of the marginalised Dhuniya (cotton carding) community, upon witnessing his traditional task becoming irrelevant for the present era, is forced to work as a labourer. But, even as it touches the raw nerves of a poor Muslim family, it does not even remotely attempt to demonise the faith. The movie remains an artistic exploration of a social plight. Nothing illustrates this better than this tragic contrast: the woman who gifts the family a goat is from the same community and lives in the same village. But while her son managed to leave his country and find some work in Saudi Arabia, and thus uplift his family back home, Rafiq continues to languish in the heart of darkness that some parts of eastern UP still are.
That the filmmaker chose to locate the movie in a village in Barabanki, a small district in Uttar Pradesh, confirms his desire to shatter the stereotypical portrayal of Muslims in contemporary cinema, which is often confined to either aristocratic nawabi settings or crime-ridden urban slums. The movie also avoids the other hackneyed trope of the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb . Extending beyond the cliches, the life of North Indian Muslims is entwined in a complex reality, and Elham authentically captures its many layers. In fact, Elham might evoke memories not of any Muslim-centric movie of the past, but of Buddhadeb Dasgupta's classic Bagh Bahadur (1989), which portrayed rural landscapes, the gradual decay of traditional professions and a delicate exploration of human dilemmas caught in the flux between the old and the new.
A movie that deals with deeper dilemmas of faith needed extraordinary performances; and the filmmaker manages to extract precise silences and silhouettes from his actors. Be it Taiyo Chan, in whose eyes one can glimpse the emotional turmoil of a rural child, or Mahmood Hashmi who plays Rafiq, the anguished bread-earner of the family, or Gunnit Kaur who lends grace and dignity to the character of Safeena, the characters resonate within you long after the movie is over. In an era dominated by big-budget films, Elham, with its pristine simplicity, leaves you gently stirred.
It also establishes that a movie's worth can't be evaluated using its budget, and works that are crafted with a minimal budget can arrest your attention with their sheer brilliance. It is, after all, the story that speaks for itself.
Rama Shanker Singh is a historian, and has published a book on the riverine Nishad communities.