Gulmohar starring Sharmila Tagore, Manoj Bajpayee has a B.V. Doshi-inspired home as protagonist — AD
“A house with stairs is a sign of success,” Arun (Manoj Bajpayee) quotes his late father-his voice breaking as he complains “Do manzilon ka ghar toh bana liya, par iss ek ghar mein, na jaane kab hum sabne apne apne kamro me apne ghar bana liye.” In Rahul V. Chitella’s new family drama Gulmohar, visual design by production designer Mansi Dhruv Mehta, and director of photography Eeshit Narain, becomes paramount to the storytelling of a dysfunctional Batra family, which is moving from their double-storied bungalow (Gulmohar Villa) in Vasant Vihar, Delhi to a penthouse in Gurugram.
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Chitella and his team invest profusely in the world-building of the Batras’ Gulmohar Villa, and utilize the plush South Delhi bungalow as a prism to articulate the fractured bonds between the Batras when the matriarch of the family, Kusum (Sharmila Tagore) decides to sell it. Imbued with the philosophy of how the relationships we choose are much more important than the ones we’re born into, Gulmohar explores how different family members discover their identities and grapple to accept it.
Shot in a house in Vasant Vihar, Gulmohar Villa is symbolic of the flowers that bloom in spring in an otherwise polluted and industrialized capital. Much like the flowers, the Batra house, where three generations of the Batras reside, are an anomaly in an increasingly elusive way of life that Delhi has begun to harbour.
“Mansi told me that she loves to clutter things, instead of it being prim and proper, which I loved, because homes are like that,” Chitella tells AD India. To impart the idea of how every corner of a house has a story to tell, the team made sure that the design displays a sense of mundaneness and belongingness that every home usually has. The characters and their emotions had to be on the forefront, and not the bungalow, therefore vying for excessive aesthetics was gratuitous for Chitella and his team.
Nevertheless, Gulmohar is replete with artistry-from Jamini Roy’s portraits to original paintings by Joya Mukerjee Logue-the walls of the Batra House are teeming with art and photographs. Mehta uses gilded mirrors, elaborate bookcases, and elegant wooden furniture, that exhibit that the Batra’s aren’t nouveau riche, but well-read, intellectual folks who come from ancestral wealth.
Originally published at https://www.architecturaldigest.in on March 20, 2023.
