It is surprising that one of my top favourite films belong to the ‘horror’ genre keeping in mind that I don’t enjoy it as much the other genres. The first time I was made to fall in love with a ghost was when I watched ‘Pisasu’, an emotion I don’t usually see myself attaching with when watching a horror flick. And, that’s what made the film extremely special. It showed me how a genre need not necessarily limit the movie’s layers and execution. Ever since it was revealed that Director/Writer Myskin was gonna do a horror film, we as audience knew it wouldn’t be your mainstream horror film and the film didn’t disappoint.
A love story between a human and a ghost has never been so haunting. This movie has a trademark eccentric Mysskin style spread throughout the movie, that shows a ghost and unrequited love in a new light. It inflicts ’love is immortal’ philosophy in a never-seen-before canvas and embodies the expression of ‘love beyond life’. We wonder why Bhavani would go to a stranger’s house after her death, but the single slipper of hers he carried with him to the home has the answer. Maybe it was her sign that he loved her back too. We also realize that the whole time she was two, her body and soul. While the body remained with her father, the soul went to the stranger, and in the end, they both come together as she tries to cleanse the world of her mortal remains and with it her memories.
We never get a chance to witness Bhavani before death but the director makes sure we understand her personality through the initial scenes which helps when we are introduced to her father later in the movie. How can an innately good person turn evil when they die, they don’t death is merely a transition of your form and not your nature. The film is deeply driven by emotion rather than which isn’t the usual case of the horror films. There isn’t a single word uttered by Bhavani other than the famous ‘Paa’, not even single exchange of words between the leads. The length she goes to protect the hero from facing the truth opposing the lengths the hero is willing to go to find the truth. We begin to wonder if we are watching a love film or horror film. There is guilt, forgiveness, empathy and every single form of human emotion intertwined into one single harmony and it is the unique perspective that makes us analyze all these emotions in a different manner.
Not all ghosts want to avenge, sometimes they just want to linger a little more cause it’s harder to say goodbye. Myskin’s Pisasu is special because it shows the vulnerable after all they are still human. In this movie, the lead characters find it hard to let go, Siddharth is unable to let go of what he had witnessed, a dad is unable to let go of the fact that his daughter is no more, Bhavani is unable to let go of the man she loves. And, in the end Bhavani gives everyone a chance to. As she lights herself along with all the memories of her in front of her father and the man, she loves giving them a final glance of love, we can’t help but shed a tear again not a result you would expect in a horror film.
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