Bhoot (Ghost)
Ram Gopal Varma
2003

Bhoot (Ghost) is, from its title, likely to be taken as a supernatural film as was Raaz.This is another Bollywood films, but unusual in that it lacks the musical numbers typically found in those films as they were with Raaz.

The question of the existence of a supernatural world is something which many films examine in the sense that they either ask the audience to accept its existence or will attempt to show it doesn’t exist. Most films that examine the question usually come down on the side of its existence. I Bury the Living and The Woman Who Came Back both relatively unknown films are among the few that wind up demonstrating that what appeared to be supernatural was not. The most famous is probably the Sherlock Holmes films The Hound of the Baskervilles, which has been remade innumerable times. None the less, many films have characters who represent opposing views in the films.

Some films are ambiguous at the end? Is it guilt or is it a ghost? Ambiguity (rather than the author’s inability to decide on the ending) is a question raised by several film makers. Curse of the Demon poses the question as do several others. Other kinds of ambiguity are also possible as occurs in The Shining for example. Others like Robert Wise’s The Haunting seem to argue FOR the supernatural textually, but AGAINST it subtextually.

Virtually all cultures have a belief in the supernatural (which is not to say that everyone in every culture believes in it, but they have some cultural understanding of what the supernatural is like and how it operates). So it is not surprising that such themes are to be found in the films of many different cultures.

While many of the supernatural stories in the West are set in a time past, there are certainly some which are completely modern, like Rosemary’s Baby. Certainly in the glut of films about flesh eating cannibal zombies we are experiencing, the setting is modern times. Bhoot, like Rosemary’s Baby is set in modern times, albeit Mumbai, not New York

After the film.

There is a great deal of directionality in the film, largely verticality. The apartment house is tall and there are many tilt and boom shots. A number of shots are low or high angle. There are many shots of the elevator going up and down, people walk up and down stairs. Is there something about the supernatural that makes it seem “over” or “above” The fact that the crime in the film has to do with a fall from a high building may also carry a motif of verticality with it.

The light in both films is expressionistic. In some ways it is not unlike giallo film lighting. Some of the colors seem unnatural and shift depending on the lighting.

Ghosts, souls and other spirits are often seen as non-material parts of the person and so their appearance usually has some non-corporeal form – that is they are not solid – they may be reflections in mirrors, in water, in photographs or as in Raaz in a kind of mist or fog. In this film the apparitions also appear in the movie theater (which is a dream) The television is often on.

While not all of these necessarily are tied to the supernatural (i.e. not every reflection in a mirror can be taken as a doppelgaenger) they are things to watch for. Notice the way in which forms are suggested almost like shadows, or initially appear in mirrors.

There is imagery of entrapment and of things coming under control. There are shots that boom down the apartment house until the brnaches of the tree begin to enclose it.

Many shots to startle: Sudden appearance of husband. People coming unexpectedly through the door. The appearances of the ghost(s) are not sudden in the same way, but they appear almost out of site – in a mirror, in a shadow, on a stairway almost invisible

What can you say about the nature of Indian horror films at this point? It is not a good idea to generalize from just 2 films, but one can see similarities that might be worth examining by looking at more horror films from India.

Who are ghosts? Think of ghosts in Western cultures.