What Dealing With Grief, In Isolation, Looks Like: Film 'Anu' Tells Us

This article may contain spoilers. Anu by Pulkit Arora is a masterpiece of a film. All of 13 minutes on Mubi with an everlasting impact on issues that most of us shy away from addressing. The subject of grief, the alienating nature of bereavement and the dark phase of sailing through a loss. 

Anu deals with this tough subject with immense intensity, humility and finesse. The depiction of the transition in a widow’s life. Her resoluteness in ensuring that her final goodbye to her husband is done the right way, keeping in touch with her traditions that are dying a death with her offspring.

An unspoken end to traditions

Doing the “pind daan” in a hotel in New Zealand for her dead husband during lockdown, is nothing short of a feat, that Pulkit Arora’s brilliant storytelling has conveyed with not a single extra scene that you feel you can overlook in the film. 

The frames of the phone light falling on her face, at night as she is lying down alone. The vulnerability and the smile as she listens to the endearing voice notes of her late husband of their humdrum life, stays forever. The little notes on what to cook and what to eat which was her life with him in India is heart wrenching and make you ponder on the little things that remain as the best memories ever. 

The film introduces us to other characters with only their voices. We can hear her son’s voice who is the new generation of children without much context to the rituals that she holds dearly in her life. 

One can see her broken emotions on her face as he dismisses her wish of doing the ritual. The silence and the rejection just unflinchingly captured in the actor Prabha Ravi’s eyes is outstanding. 

Prabha Ravi is brilliant and I am already a fan

The part of the film when she bends down to search for a button of the coat that belongs to her husband and she holds the cloth close to her nose to smell his fragrance is poetic, utterly a fragile human expression of loss. Trying to hold on to something that is gone forever. 

The scene that doesn’t leave is when she has done the havan in a bin inside the hotel room, as the smoke alarm goes off and finally the water is pouring to stop the fire, she is seen sitting on her knees, getting drenched under the water like it is her salvation and love answered in those moments of silence, breaking the rules of the hotel and her stubborn heart knowing that she must bid him farewell the right way even if it is in a foreign country during strict lockdown. As this matters to her the most. 

I rewinded this scene and sat in silence, holding my breath to only exhale after the credits rolled twice over. 

This was a poignant short film that I will watch again to just sink in Anu’s loss and grief, as I see my Ma in her. Fortunately, it wasn’t lockdown when Baba left and I was sure to not dismiss the final rites as a daughter. 

It also makes me think of the rituals that may soon cease to exist as more and more children leave the country and parents will age alone in senior living homes or live alone at homes. The rituals will lose significance and death will probably be a loss not so deep and bereavement will be done in silence keeping time and convenience as the biggest factor in one’s life. 

The absolutely talented Pulkit Arora touched me deeply in this film on bereavement and the importance of rituals in the life of a generation that is vanishing sooner than we can imagine. Arora’s film Anu has received applause from many festivals including being at the New Zealand International Film Festival 2023: New Zealand's Best Shorts. (Winner of Audience Award and Emerging Talent Award)

This is a director on whom my eyes are now set with hope for more of his art moving me internally to search, think and remain profoundly hopeful in cinematic art that lyrically moves from frame to frame.

Mohua Chinappa is a poet, an author and runs two podcasts, The Literature Lounge and The Mohua Show. She is also a member of a UK based award winning think tank called Bridge India.

Views expressed are the author's own.