Vinod Kapri’s ‘Pyre’: Quiet decisions made to live, love, prepare for death

When Alfred Hitchcock said, “Actors are cattle”, he was merely referring to the need for the actors to diligently follow the director’s instructions. But the masters of Italian neorealism, such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, showed the world what it takes to work with non-actors. It’s a rare expertise to elicit believable performances from them.

One Indian filmmaker who continues to raise the bar when it comes to working with non-actors is Vinod Kapri. His latest offering, ‘Pyre’, which has been creating a lot of buzz in the festival circuit, follows an elderly couple — Padam and Tulsi — played not by trained actors, but by real-life villagers, Padam Singh and Hira Devi.

In his previous feature film, ‘Pihu’, Kapri relied upon a two-year-old girl to narrate his story, breaking almost every convention associated with Hindi films: no songs, no big stars, and no colourful supporting characters to propel the story forward. Through ‘Pihu’, Kapri demonstrated that filmmaking is not about making things big, but about making the canvas alluring to the eye. Every moment of the film is filled with genuine emotion and that’s what makes ‘Pihu’ a truly unique viewing experience.

And yet again, in ‘Pyre’, Kapri exercises a total mastery over the cinematic medium. The film is set in a near-abandoned village in Uttarakhand. The formidable presence of the two non-actors is the film’s quiet triumph. No performance could have matched the lived-in rhythm of their shared life. They don’t act; they simply exist. And it is in this simplicity that ‘Pyre’ finds its gravitas.

The story of Padam and Tulsi is one of slow erosion — of population, memory, relevance. Their son, long lost to the city, writes sporadically but never visits. Around them, the village empties out, season by season, until only the wind and the goats remain as witnesses. Yet, in this vast absence, they persist — milking goats, tending to each other’s coughs, and bickering with a fondness that only decades of togetherness can produce.

Some films reveal their power not through narrative urgency, but through stillness — through what they choose to observe, and what they allow to remain unsaid. ‘Pyre’ belongs to this rare mould. It unfolds like a mountain prayer — repetitive, meditative and laden with unspeakable devotion.

Kapri’s direction is deceptively passive. He doesn’t impose emotion. He doesn’t chase spectacle. Instead, he allows silence to accumulate like snowfall. Scenes breathe. Time meanders. The camera often sits still, watching as the husband-wife prepare their respective funeral pyres — not out of morbidity, but out of love and a pragmatic understanding of mortality.

It’s an image that stays: a man building a pyre for his wife, not with dread, but with a strange, wordless tenderness.

The Himalayan landscape becomes more than a backdrop. It is a character in itself — stoic, eternal, indifferent. The vastness of nature dwarfs human suffering, but it also elevates the smallest human gesture to something almost sacred. When Padam offers Tulsi a spoon of goat’s milk, or when she folds his blanket, we are reminded that dignity often resides in the ordinary.

What’s especially striking is the film’s refusal to sentimentalise rural life. It neither romanticises their hardship, nor presents them as symbols of victimhood. Instead, it honours their agency — the quiet decisions they make each day to live, to love and to prepare for death on their own terms. The soundscape, punctuated by folk songs and ambient nature, is minimal but deeply evocative. Music here doesn’t underline feeling, it echoes it, like a memory half-remembered. One must also mention the restraint in editing. The rhythm of the film mirrors the couple’s own: slow, deliberate, without urgency but full of intent.

Kapri’s earlier documentary work echoes faintly in ‘Pyre’, but this film is something else entirely. It is not reportage. It is an elegy. It is also an act of cinematic humility — an offering, rather than a thesis. There is no resolution here, no climactic revelation. Just two human beings, suspended in time, awaiting the inevitable with an intimacy that is both harrowing and poignantly beautiful.

As per the original plan, Kapri wanted to cast Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah as the elderly couple. But after Shah contracted Covid, it became challenging for him to shoot in higher altitudes. Unable to find suitable replacements, Kapri shifted his attention to a documentary project. He only returned to ‘Pyre’ a couple of years later, deciding to shoot it with non-actors.

This is not a film to be consumed. It is a film to sit with — to absorb, to honour. In the dying embers of a forgotten village, Vinod Kapri, like the master storytellers of yore, discovers something eternal: that even in the face of abandonment and decay, love — real, unadorned love — can burn gently on.

— The writer is a film critic who served as a jury member for the 69th and 70th National Film Awards