Monsoon magic: From Tumbbad to Road to Perdition – when crime is unleashed in the backdrop of rain

Very few cultures celebrate rain like we do in India. Cloudy skies and pouring rain have overwhelmingly been used as a romantic metaphor in our art. Remember Kalidasa’s Meghadootam? Some of the most memorable Hindi love songs have been shot with a rainy backdrop – from Raj Kapoor romancing Nargis in Pyar Hua Ikrar Hua in Shree 420 to Tip Tip Barsa Paani of Mohra.

But rain also has another side to it – dark, gloomy and full of foreboding. In multiple films, both in Bollywood and Hollywood, rain acts as a metaphor for the mysterious and the unknown. In Indian cinema, one of the most prominent examples is the horror thriller, Tumbbad. The village of Tumbbad, where the demon Hastar resides, is constantly lashed by heavy rain, accompanied by misty, cloudy weather. The weather perfectly complements the dark story of greed, lust and evil.

Another film that uses rain to great effect in highlighting the sense of doom is Raavan, where Ragini (Aishwarya Rai) must contend with the untameable weather phenomena of wind and rain after she is kidnapped by the bandit, Beera.

Ram Gopal Verma’s Kaun? – a gem of a thriller – shows Urmila Matondkar’s character stuck in a bungalow as torrential rain makes it impossible for her to move out. Her growing sense of claustrophobia in the house, as strangers come knocking on her door, is triggered by the sense of isolation created by the rainy weather.

World cinema is no less when it comes to using rain to create an atmosphere of doom. One of the biggest examples of this is Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon – consistently voted one of the greatest films ever made – where the story of the samurai, his wife and the bandit is told and retold by a bunch of strangers who are taking shelter from pouring rain. Significantly, the skies clear up only when the film nears its end.

The crime drama, Road To Perdition, has the iconic and unforgettable night shootout scene, where Tom Hanks shoots down an entire gang in the rain. The way the scene unfolds, shot almost in monochrome, with the men in their long coats and umbrellas like silhouette figures in the rain, is as stark and gloomy as it is artistic. Rain comes back as a haunting element in another Tom Hanks film, Saving Private Ryan, where the weather is a marker of the horrors of war.

Some of Hollywood’s best fantasy films also use rain to great effect – whether it’s the climactic battle scene in Matrix Revolutions or the unforgettable sequence from Jurassic Park, where the T-Rex breaks through the fence and attacks the group of visitors to the island, with the rain adding a drumbeat of doom in the backdrop.