The filmmaking duo Rish and Kanish have a deep love for cinema that dates back to their childhood in San Jose, California. Netflix’s original mailer subscription fuelled their “distinctive media diets,” as Rish puts it in our interview for their debut feature Namaslay. From 1970s Indian cinema to Hollywood blockbusters like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they watched anything and everything.
In fact, it’s their sheer respect for the art of filmmaking that the pair of brothers, now in their early-30s, find themselves “frustrated” with the current state of popular cinema (i.e., Hollywood). To them, there’s a degree of privilege and power that comes with being able to make a movie — one that many film executives, in their view, are wont to abuse.
“When you show someone a film, there are elements in it that are simultaneously affecting their worldview, their perception, their feelings about themselves,” says Kanish. “If you are someone who wields such a power and you’re using it to sell shoes or some other brainless, capitalist nonsense only, then you’re not only a bad artist, but you’re also evil — and that’s something that makes us really angry.”
Here, Kanish points fingers at the bloated production cost of Hollywood blockbusters today that climb to the hundreds of millions: “They got fucking nothing to say. They don’t give a shit about the craft of filmmaking either, and they also abuse the people who work with them. But even if they were not doing that, they’re still making this steaming piece of shit with so much money that can be used even outside the entertainment industry. $200 million can buy so many meals.”
Namaslay follows a young woman named Gayatri (Kiru Srikanth) who joins a yoga studio called Vital Soul with her best friend Judy (Angela Sant’Albano). Gayatri is hesitant at first: yoga was, after all, a spiritual practice in her childhood that formed the basis of her connection with her recently deceased “paati” or grandmother (Usha Krishnan). However, having just moved across the country to California, Gayatri is desperate for community. That said, Vital Soul’s owner and manager, Reina (Christina Moore), takes a particular interest in Gayatri that hides a more sinister agenda.
“We were very inspired by the masala films of the 1970s,” Rish says, referring to the tradition of Indian cinema that, like its culinary namesake, involved mixing different genres and stories into one film. “These were films about working-class people. Often, they were really commercial. They had really punchy dialogue, cool set pieces, great music, and all that stuff.”
The main appeal of this style of cinema for the filmmaking duo was the “anti-establishment undercurrent” that they possessed. Rish adds, “We recognize, as Indian filmmakers, that in that tradition of masala cinema, it can actually make a film more commercial to be sharp-elbowed. If you actually have something to say, it can resonate with people more strongly.”
Indeed, Namaslay has a clear confrontational edge to it. Reminiscent of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Rish and Kanish’s film is the David standing up to the Goliath of the yoga industrial complex. Acerbic and unapologetic, they tackle the westernization of yoga and, in doing so, unravel its tapestry of white supremacy, colonialism, and exploitation. One scene, for example, shows Gayatri being forced by Reina to purchase studio-branded yoga pants — on “sale,” yet racking up a $100 price tag — in order to be a member. A real-life scenario inspired this moment: Rish and Kanish’s father was once rejected by a yoga studio for wearing basketball shorts to a class instead of the studio’s required athleisure wear (incidentally sold in their gift shop).
Of course, it isn’t enough for Rish and Kanish to take a political stance without providing entertainment first and foremost. “We experienced this unique blend of seeing the power of popular movies and honing something that we wanted to say over many, many years,” says Kanish. “Like my brother said earlier, when something is sharp-elbowed, and it’s packaged in a way that is exciting, it’s a fun ride. The message is more easily disseminated and widely digested. If we had the same message, but much less enjoyably delivered, then I think a lot of people would approach what we had to say bitterly.”
Rish adds, “In the past several years, there’s been this explosion of sequels, remakes, reboots, rehashes. It’s obviously part of the history of Hollywood that there’s always been franchise films, but it feels like, recently, in a lot of film industries, there’s this retrenchment to nostalgia and, by proxy, a lot of exclusion that’s happening. There’s a lack of originality. Young people are still interested in making movies, but they don’t see an avenue to do it because you have to be making the 25th instalment in some franchise. Even if you make something original, the lure is immediately there to get swept up into some franchise — that’s the only way that it seems feasible to maintain a career.”
“All that is to say: we really do love movies, but there is such a malaise. We use masala in the film, and we have a lot of metaphors about food as they relate to movies. To extend that metaphor about food, there’s just been a lot of microwave food that’s been served to audiences recently, so we wanted to make something fresh.”
