Nepal: Cultural film's Numafung is visual poetry. It is gentle and nuanced.
Steering away from most, if not all, the cliches of Nepali cinema-the long
fights, the dance and song sequence atop a hill, the heavy monologues-Numafung
provides the viewer with a ‘slice-of-life’ window into the lives of a farming
Limbu family somewhere in Eastern Nepal. The film has a mixture of Nepali and
Limbu languages—with older characters speaking Limbu language, whereas the
young opting to speak Nepali.
photo: google image
Told through the eyes of
Lojina, a young Limbu girl who lives with her mother, father and big sister, Numafung
(or Numa), the plot of the film revolves around the two marriages of Numa—first
to the young and kind Ojahang and later to the temperamental and often violent,
Girihang.
Divided into five
chapters, Lojina acts as a surrogate for the viewer—quietly but carefully
observing all the major incidents that affect her big sister’s life: two forced
marriages, her domestic struggles, a miscarriage, and an elopement.
What makes Numafung
interesting is not just the dramatic things that happen on screen. In fact,
it’s very easy to make a woman wail, cry and feel pain on screen. There’s a
sort of plague that’s spread rampantly in Nepali cinema and worldwide, and it's
called ‘fridging’—a
plot device in which a woman is murdered, raped, or subjected to other
forms of abuse only to give a male protagonist a cause to start fighting their
enemy. And the sad reality is that this is something that Nepali directors and
screenwriters rely on way too much. This is not the case in Numafung. The ‘heroes’
who were violent and cruel—like Girihang—don’t get catharsis.
Moreover, Numafung helped
me learn about a totally different culture from mine. It is not a stretch to
argue that the mainstream movie scene is filled with Khas-Arya stories. It’s
rare to see main protagonists from ethnic minorities. Even if they are in the
film, their characters are marred with stereotypes and are often the butt of
the jokes.
I learned from the film
that the Limbu community is more open in many ways. Lojina is given ‘Tongba’ (a
drink made from fermented millet) to drink whenever she visits her sister. When
Numa becomes a widow after the death of her first husband, she can start a
fresh life. In the haat bazaar (local weekly market), the young girls
and boys were shown freely mingling with each other, flirting and dancing
without any worries of being reprimanded.
Similarly, both of Numa’s
mothers-in-law are sympathetic and powerful women who treat Numa
kindly—refusing to follow the ‘cruel’ mother-in-law trope that’s all too
common. Numa’s father isn’t a roaring patriarch, one that is violent or cruelly
authoritative. It really is quite refreshing to see how, even in 2001, Numafung
abandoned all tropes that afflict Nepali cinema—instead, opting to be a film
that is authentic, honest and culturally sensitive.
Though one can argue that
the Limbu community is perhaps more open than, say, the Khas, they are
still inherently plagued by patriarchy. The concept of ‘sunauli-rupauli’—wherein
the parents give their daughter's hand to the suitors who can provide the most
wealth and gold, as well as the idea of ‘jari’—payment typically made by the
man who ‘steals’ the wife from the husband see women as a commodity that can be
exchanged as currency. There is a scene where Numa asks her mother, “Do you
take me for an object to be traded?”
But the beauty of
Numafung is that Numa and all the other women in the film are not passive
receivers of patriarchy. They speak up, and they reprimand men that misbehave.
In a scene, Lojina spits on Girihang’s plate before giving him the food and
slams the plate on the floor right in front of him. This can be seen as a form
of ‘disguised
resistance’ wherein the oppressed find covert and subtle ways of responding
to domination.
The crux is that there
simply aren’t enough movies like Numafung. Movies that treat their characters
(especially the female characters) with respect, making them complex human
beings and making them real. Even two decades after its release, Numafung is still
relevant. The patriarchal maladies faced by Numa and the women in the film
continue to haunt women even today. In her review of
the film for Himal Southasian, Seira Tamang, a political scientist says,
“From the widening of the frame to accommodate nuances of Limbu culture, to the
underlying perceptiveness with regard to gender relationships…the multiple
sensibilities which inform this film are extraordinary.”
Numafung is a film that
should be watched by everyone. Nabin Subba, the actors and the entire film crew
have made a truly beautiful film that’ll leave you comforted and with a lot of
things to think about. A new film set within the Limbu community titled ‘Jaari’— directed by
Upendra Subba and starring Dayahang Rai and Miruna Magar— will hit theatres on
April 14. One can only hope that ‘Jaari’ will be able to match the brilliance
of Numafung.
Language: Limbu and
Nepali
Subtitle: English
Duration: 1 hour, 48
minutes
Director: Nabin Subba
Cast: Anupama Subba,
Niwahangma Limbu, Prem Subba, Ramesh Singhak and Alok Nembang
Released: 2001
Urza Acharya
kathmandupost
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