Moha

Santosh Sivan is a filmmaker celebrated in India and beyond for his free, lyrical style, and especially his skill as a cinematographer. His work bridges independent productions (Nine Emotions, IFFR 2006) and lush, epic musicals (Asoka, 2001).

In Moha, which has been described as his ‘passion project’, Sivan returns to a more artisanal and personal mode of cinema: the reinvention of myth in a timeless, poetic framework. The deliberately slender storyline involves a spiritual male hermit, a female nymph who tempts him into secular ways of the flesh, and a rival lover. But the true driving force of events – as the philosophically detached voice-over narration informs us – is the cosmic energy of Shakti, here embodied in an alluring, destructive sword.

An amalgam of Hindu mythology and the influence of Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), Moha is unafraid to explore gender stereotypes and universal themes of desire and power as it churns through the cycles of history. Sivan’s style expresses itself in associative montages that link the characters to natural phenomena (almost the entire action is set outdoors), sweeping flourishes of the musical score, a choreographic approach to movement and gesture, and images that are never less than splendid.

– Adrian Martin

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