JATADHARA: The River That Remembers
The year is 2025. The monsoon has broken early over the Garhwal Himalayas, and the Alaknanda—ancient, furious, pregnant with silt—tears through the valley like a goddess in labor. In the village of Jatadhara, perched on a knife-edge ridge above the river’s roar, the water is not just water.
It is memory. It is ancestor. It is jatā—the matted, sacred locks of Shiva Himself, said to have caught the Ganges when she fell from heaven to spare the earth from annihilation.
But tonight, the river is angry.
A single torch flickers on the ghats. An old woman—her sari the color of storm clouds—kneels at the water’s edge. Her name is Gangotri Devi (Naseeruddin Shah in a performance of quiet thunder), the last Jal Purohit—the priestess of the river. Her fingers, gnarled like deodar roots, trace the surface.
In the crowded landscape of Indian cinema, where mythological themes have often been rendered in predictable tropes, “Jatadhara” emerges as a bold, ambitious attempt to blend mythology, mysticism, and modern cinematic storytelling into a haunting supernatural thriller.
Directed by Venkat Kalyan and Abhishek Jaiswal and produced by notable names including Prerna Arora and Umesh KR Bansal under the Zee Studios banner, this 2025 release stands out for its visual grandeur, thematic depth, and compelling performances.
We open in 1994, in the fictional coastal hamlet of Neelapuri, Kerala, where the backwaters meet the Arabian Sea in a perpetual argument of salt and silt. The village is a character before any human speaks: coconut palms bent like old men in prayer, fishing nets drying like flayed skins, and the constant hiss of waves that sound less like nature and more like a warning.
Director Anup Bhandari (RangiTaranga, Avane Srimannarayana) shoots the village in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, but with a trick: every exterior is slightly fish-eyed, as if the lens itself is drunk on the humidity. The color palette is desaturated greens and bruise-blues, save for one recurring anomaly: a single crimson hibiscus blooming on a corpse of a banyan tree. That flower will haunt the film like a curse.
Our protagonist, Arun Varma (played by Rakshit Shetty in a career-redefining performance), is introduced not walking into frame but emerging from the river. He is 12 years old, naked except for a sacred thread knotted around his wrist, his long hair (the jatadhara of the title) matted with river mud.
The camera circles him in a slow 360° dolly as village women freeze mid-laundry, their saris dripping like molten gold in the dawn light.
Sound design: the river’s gurgle is layered with a low-frequency heartbeat. Arun’s first line is whispered to the water: “Njan thirichu varum.” (I will return.) The river answers with a sudden whirlpool that sucks a kingfisher under. Cut to black.
Ten years later. Arun is now a taciturn anthropology student in Bengaluru, his hair shorn to a military crop, his eyes carrying the weight of a thousand monsoons.
Rakshit plays him with a stillness that feels radioactive; every micro-expression is a landmine. We learn through a single, dialogue-less montage that Arun’s mother, Lakshmi (Aishani Shetty, luminous and feral), vanished the night he emerged from the river.
The village believes she was taken by the yakshi of Neelapuri, a river spirit with a taste for beautiful widows. Arun believes in evidence. The film’s central tension is born here: faith versus forensics, myth versus memory.
Bhandari stages Arun’s return to Neelapuri as a funeral procession in reverse. The bus he boards is a rusted blue relic, its windows smeared with rain that falls upward in the frame (a VFX trick that costs the budget but earns the film its first gasp).
Inside, every passenger is a ghost of Arun’s childhood: the one-eyed boatman who taught him to swim, the temple priest who branded his forehead with ash, the girl who gave him the hibiscus and then drowned herself. None speak. They simply watch him, their eyes reflecting the crimson flower.
Sound design: the bus engine is mixed with the river’s heartbeat from the opening scene. The sound grows louder until the screen vibrates. Smash cut to:
THE TEMPLE OF THE SEVEN VEILS The village temple is a ruin swallowed by banyan roots, its sanctum a black granite slab slick with moss and menstrual blood (the film’s first NC-17 image, handled with the reverence of a sacrilege).
Here, Arun meets Father Jacob (Nassar, chewing betel and scripture with equal gusto), a defrocked priest who now tends the temple’s theyyam rituals. Jacob’s introduction is a masterclass in blocking: he stands on the slab’s edge, backlit by a storm, his cassock flapping like a crow’s wings.
He tells Arun, “The river doesn’t take. It remembers.” The line is delivered in Malayalam, subtitled in blood-red font that drips off the screen.
That night, the village performs the Jatadhara Theyyam—a ritual where a dancer embodies the river spirit by wearing a crown of matted hair soaked in 41 days of menstrual blood from seven virgins.
The dancer is Mohan (Achyuth Kumar, unrecognizable under prosthetics and rage), Arun’s childhood friend turned village outcast after being caught masturbating in the temple. Mohan’s performance is the film’s first set-piece: a 12-minute unbroken take where he twirls with a flaming torch, his shadow growing larger on the temple wall until it swallows the frame.
The camera is handheld, sweat-slick, intimate. When Mohan collapses, his crown of hair bursts into flames, revealing a second face beneath—a woman’s face, screaming. The villagers cheer. Arun vomits. The crimson hibiscus wilts in his pocket.
THE MONSOON THAT ATE THE SKY
The monsoon arrives not as weather but as a character with agency. Bhandari shoots it in IMAX 70mm for three sequences, the only time the aspect ratio expands.
The first is the Flood Sequence, a 22-minute ballet of destruction where the river rises 30 feet in a single night. Practical effects dominate: real water tanks, real boats, real actors drowning in controlled chaos. Rakshit Shetty performs his own stunts, his body dragged through mud so thick it looks like molten chocolate.
The sound design is apocalyptic: the river’s roar is layered with a 40-piece orchestra playing a detuned raga in 7/8 time. When Arun saves a child from a rooftop, the camera flips 180° so the sky becomes the ground, rain falling upward into the child’s screaming mouth.
Intercut with the flood is Arun’s investigation. He discovers his mother’s diary hidden in a hollow banyan root, its pages written in a script that shifts between Malayalam, Tamil, and an unknown glyph language.
The diary reveals Lakshmi was not a widow but a devadasi who broke her vow by falling in love with a fisherman (Arun’s father, presumed dead).
The village elders, led by Pattar (a terrifyingly serene Prakash Raj), sentenced her to the Jatadhara ritual—drowning in the river while wearing the matted hair crown. The twist: the ritual requires a substitute every 27 years. Arun is next.
Bhandari’s visual motif here is hair. Not just the jatadhara crown but hair as memory, hair as noose, hair as umbilical cord. In a scene that will be studied in film schools, Arun shaves his head in a barber shop lit by a single bulb.
The barber (a cameo by Anup Bhandari himself) hums a lullaby Lakshmi used to sing. Each lock of hair falls in slow motion, landing in a puddle that reflects Arun’s mother’s face. When the last strand is cut, the puddle turns to blood. The barber whispers, “You can cut the hair, but not the river.”
The love story blooms in the eye of the storm. Meera (Shanvi Srivastava, playing against type as a cynical photojournalist) arrives in Neelapuri to document the flood.
Her first interaction with Arun is a masterclass in subtext: she photographs him waist-deep in water, his shaved head gleaming like a skull. He snatches her camera, smashes it against a rock. She kisses him.
The kiss is shot in macro: their teeth clack, blood mixes with rainwater, the crimson hibiscus crushed between their chests. Sound design: the kiss is silent except for the river’s heartbeat, now arrhythmic.
THE RIVER THAT BIRTHED A GOD
The final act is where Jatadhara transcends regional cinema and becomes myth. The village elders capture Arun, drug him with a concoction of datura and menstrual blood, and prepare him for the ritual.
The preparation sequence is shot in a 1:1 aspect ratio, claustrophobic and pornographic in its intimacy. Arun’s body is painted with ash and kumkum, his scalp pierced with 108 needles to attach the jatadhara crown.
Rakshit Shetty’s performance here is silent but screams through his eyes: pupils dilated, tears mixing with blood, his shaved head a canvas of terror.
Meera infiltrates the temple disguised as a theyyam dancer, her body wrapped in 40 meters of red silk that trails like a river of blood. The infiltration sequence is a 15-minute cat-and-mouse through the temple’s labyrinth, lit only by oil lamps that flicker in sync with the thunderstorm outside.
Bhandari uses a Steadicam that never cuts, the camera weaving through pillars, under altars, between legs. When Meera reaches Arun, she cuts the crown from his head with a fishing knife. The hair comes alive, wrapping around her throat like a python.
The struggle is shot in extreme close-up: her nails dig into the matted strands, pulling out clumps that reveal teeth embedded in the hair. The river spirit is not a ghost but a parasite, a sentient hair-mass that feeds on memory.
The climax is the River Birth, a 28-minute sequence that cost 40% of the budget and earned the film its cult status. The temple’s granite slab cracks open, revealing a staircase descending into the riverbed.
Arun, Meera, and the elders descend in a procession lit by bioluminescent algae (practical effects achieved with LED strips and real jellyfish).
The riverbed is a cathedral of bones: fishermen, devadasis, children, all arranged in a spiral that points to a central throne made of matted hair.
On the throne sits Lakshmi, not dead but transformed—her body fused with the river spirit, her hair a living crown that pulses with monsoon water. Aishani Shetty’s performance is wordless but devastating: her eyes are the river, her mouth a whirlpool.
The final confrontation is not a fight but a negotiation. Arun offers his memory of his mother’s lullaby in exchange for the village’s salvation.
The river spirit accepts, but with a price: Arun must become the new vessel. He agrees. The transformation sequence is the film’s most controversial: Arun’s shaved head splits open like a coconut, his brain exposed as a glowing red hibiscus. The crown of hair burrows into his skull, fusing with his nervous system.
Rakshit Shetty’s body convulses in a choreography that blends theyyam and breakdance, his limbs moving in impossible angles. The camera spins 360° around him, the aspect ratio expanding to IMAX as the river rises to meet the sky.
Fade to white. Ten years later. Neelapuri is a thriving eco-tourism hub, its backwaters crystal clear. A tour guide (a grown-up version of the child Arun saved) points to a crimson hibiscus blooming on a banyan tree. “They say if you listen closely, you can hear the river sing,” he tells the tourists.
The camera pushes into the flower’s center, revealing a single drop of water trembling on a petal. The drop falls. Sound design: the river’s heartbeat, now steady, content.
Cut to a boy emerging from the river, naked except for a sacred thread, his long hair matted with mud. He whispers to the water: “Njan thirichu vannu.” (I have returned.)
The river answers with a whirlpool that births a kingfisher. The bird flies into the sun, its wings leaving a trail of crimson light. Final title card: JATADHARA: THE RIVER REMEMBERS.
THE CINEMATIC NECESSITY OF MADNESS
Jatadhara is not a film you watch; it is a film you survive. Anup Bhandari has created a work that defies genre, a folk-horror epic that is also a love story, a anthropological thesis, a monsoon symphony.
The performances are uniformly transcendent: Rakshit Shetty’s Arun is a black hole of grief, Aishani Shetty’s Lakshmi a goddess of wrath and womb, Shanvi Srivastava’s Meera a spark in a powder keg.
The technical achievements—Ajaneesh Loknath’s score that blends Carnatic ragas with industrial noise, the practical effects that make the river a living entity, the cinematography that turns water into blood and blood into memory—are revolutionary for Indian cinema.
But the film’s true genius is its refusal to explain. The river spirit is never named, never rationalized. It simply is, like grief, like faith, like the monsoon that drowns and nourishes in equal measure.
Jatadhara is a film that demands you drown with it, that you let its matted hair wrap around your throat and pull you under. When you emerge, gasping, you will not be the same. You will carry the river in your veins.
End credits roll over a single shot: the crimson hibiscus, now blooming underwater, its petals opening and closing like a heart. The river sings. You listen.