The political landscape of contemporary India gets its origin story in Lalit Vachani's 2002 “The Men in the Tree – Revisiting the RSS”, a sequel to a documentary he made 9 years earlier called “The Boy in the Branch”. In “The Men…” Vachani revisits the protagonists of his film in order to see how have their ideas and convictions stood the test of time. The film, despite being made already over 20 years ago, still has a timely edge. It is so, because RSS, the right-wing paramilitary organisation at the heart of the documentary, is active to this day, and has ties with Narendra Modi's BJP.
The Men in the Tree – Revisiting the RSS screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam
Vachani embarked on making the first instalment, “The Boy…”, in 1993 for UK's Channel Four. The film was about the indoctrination of young boys by RSS in the city of Nagpur. What stands out as a highly fascinating facet of “The Men…” are the constant links the director makes to the earlier film. The two works are tightly intertwined, thus elevating “The Men in the Tree” into a project immensely exceeding the premise of a political documentary. It is much more than that, a dense collage of temporalities and characters growing up to see more clearly how their childhoods were manipulated. Some of the men evolve over time, some remain faithful to their xenophobic convictions.
By creating the 9-year long gap, the director ends up with a “Boyhood”-like project. Even if the story is in many respects quite alienating and dry, particularly for the viewer not exactly versed in the Indian history, one will still be mesmerized by the ways in which the director manages to weave all of the elements. The real essence of the documentary lies in those subtle callbacks to the 90s India, which was filled with opportunities for the characters.
Although Vachani's personal views and ideas are transparently presented at the outset of the film, “The Men…” is an investigative venture which, at its heart, remains analytical rather than overly emotional. Furthermore, the director not only looks at the mere events, such as RSS's ties to Mahathma Gandhi's assassin, he also tries to reconstruct how certain concepts and ideologies have originated in India. The film is a nuanced glance at Modi's India, with the insights into the mythmaking processes that have largely constructed the political discourse of today.
