Jessica Oreck’s film essay on this topic is delicate and spectacular. Experimental to its core, we are given not exactly a documentary, but something closer to a meditation. It alternates between two simultaneous modes.

Russian-narrated animation of the titular Slavic folktale provides the most ostensible structure for the film, as we follow the tale of two children forced to flee their home and look for refuge in the forest. The other, greater part of the film consists of excerpts read in Polish from the work of thinkers such as sociologist Theodor W. Adorno, mythologist J. E. Cirlot, and contemporary Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, as well as Oreck’s own commentary. Visually, we are given a montage of images – forests, cities, and villages – cut together like one big road-trip adventure through some of the most enchanting places in the world. The setting is given in story-book style as “Eastern Europe, some time after the 20th century”.

Oreck is particularly possessed with the act of mushroom hunting. She notes that it is a formative memory for her, and through various scenes, we see the hunting, picking, collecting, cutting, drying, selling and cooking of mushrooms of all different sorts. Mushrooms also feature in the fairy tale. The two children, having met an evil witch, Baba Yaga, in her strange forest house, are commanded to prepare dinner for her or be eaten themselves. But the task is a trick, as the witch’s promised grain stores are empty. Despairing, they are saved by the instruction of a little forest mouse, who suggests they go into the forest and collect mushrooms. They do so and are able to prepare a meal. There is something mythical about the realm of the forest; in it, one can die of hunger or exposure, or worse, meet a monster like Baba Yaga. Yet simultaneously, the forest can provide helpers, glimmers of hope, and unconventional ways to survive.

Underlying these ponderings on the magic of the wild, a more troubling reality can be seen to swell in the background. Haunting images of trees being cut down, destroyed buildings, and shots recalling the wars that tore through Eastern Europe, invite us to wonder about the fate of this mystical realm. Will the forest outlive humanity?

The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga is not what you expect from a film, but you leave it with a broader idea of what film is and can be. It allows itself to be meandering and indulgent, but it never feels purposeless or banal. And even if its ideas don’t satisfy, Sean Pride Williams’s gorgeous 16mm camerawork, and Paul Grimstad’s delicate, swelling electronic music are sure to impress.

4/5 stars

Jala’s production is modest in a way that seems only appropriate to the subject matter; the camerawork is not astounding, nor is the music extraordinary. See this film if the content interests you, because though that is all it has to offer, it is offered in abundance. He questions the children (all boys) in their own language, and they respond with their trust, confessing private thoughts about rich people, girls, scary dreams, their friends, rivals, vices.

Yogi, a younger one, says he is constantly dreaming about ghosts. In one story he tells, someone hits a corpse on the pyre with a stick, causing its torso to sit up with the arms extended. The men in charge of the burning all become terrified and run away, until a brave one hits it again, and the demon falls supine once more. There is a touch of magic realism in how densely we see myth, magic and reality to be intertwined on the burning ghats. “We dream of this cremation ground”, Yogi says. This is their reality. And Jala is unafraid to show us this grisly world, where children are forced to act like adults.

Ravi tells us about his girlfriend, Archana, who succumbed to an illness. In a poignant turn of events, he has to see her body being burned on the very cremation ground he works on. We later see him taking a bong hit. “Why do you smoke marijuana?” Jala asks, and Ravi breaks into a fit of light giggles. “It’s a hard job”. When Jala chides him for his unhealthy habit, Ravi retorts cynically, “if you care so much, send me 5000 rupees as dole and I won’t even peek at this wretched place”. At this, the filmmaker is speechless.

Towards the end, we see footage of the boisterous Navratra festival, with packed streets and loud music booming onto an ’80s-style-coloured dance floor in Varanasi. One of the pyre boys climbs up onto the stage and dances with a sari-clad woman, cheered on by the crowd, animated by the frenzy of the evening. For a brief moment, the boy seems unburderned by caste, by responsibility, but in a poignant motion, the camera pans down to see the continually burning fires of bodies less than 50 meters away.

Children of the Pyre is full of this unsettling lucidity about death and poverty – the children know that once this experiment in stardom ends, they may be fated to spend their lives in miserable, grinding poverty, and return to being invisible. But that won’t stop them putting on a show. Their fires burn on.

3.5/5 stars