Review: Dug Dug Is a Dark, Freewheeling Satire of Religious Commercialism

The title of Ritwik Pareek’s Dug Dug comes from a model of Indian motorcycles that are themselves named after the sound they make when they turn on. That may seem like a curious source of inspiration for a film concerned with the nature of faith and organized religion, but at the center of Pareek’s satire of religious commercialism is a bike that passes through a number of hands and becomes the focal point of a cult of mysticism. Also, the chugging rhythm of the onomatopoeic title is of a piece with the musical energy that permeates almost every single minute of this alternately dark and freewheeling film.

The bike initially belongs to Thakur Sa (Altaf Khan), a middle-aged man who we encounter drinking at a bar located in a desolate stretch of highway. Across a sequence seemingly lit only by the pink neon lights that decorate the bar, a drunken Thakur mutters existential musings in a ragged speech-song whisper redolent of Leonard Cohen before taking to the road. As he rides across roads illuminated only by headlights, the soundtrack filled with Morricone-esque twangs of electric guitar, he suggests a vision out of an acid western, only the occasional passing vehicle giving the impression that he isn’t the only person on Earth.

Pareek achieves a hypnotic effect through his use of light and shadow, camera movement, and editing that’s perfectly keyed to the music on the soundtrack. But no less thrilling is his blending of seemingly disparate tones and the correlations, subtle and explicit alike, that he draws between spirituality and daily life. Thakur’s journey comes to end when, distracted by a colorful billboard on a country road, he crashes his bike and passes out. At first he seems okay, but as the camera pans up, a passing truck crushes the man. Before we’ve fully absorbed the shock of this demented, near-deadpan moment, Pareek zooms in on the fortune teller on the colorful billboard, his hands stretched out in the direction of the dead man.

In the fallout of this accident, the visual splendor of the neon-tinged nighttime opening gives way to stark, western-like vistas of the mountainous region where a remote police outpost is located. Here, the film strikes a more realist tone, which only further calls attention to the dissonance created by the bike, after its impounded, beginning to act of its own accord. Recalling Quentin Dupieux’s lo-fi anthropomorphizing of a tire in Rubber, Pareek uses slight tilts of the bike’s front section to suggest that it’s sentient. Later, the louche swivel of the front wheel gives the uncanny impression that its headlight is giving a mocking eyeroll to people for their bafflement over how the bike keeps ending up back at the scene of the accident.

Eventually, word spreads about the motorcycle and a cult grows up around it. Both the bike and Thakur are elevated to godlike status, and people appeal to the latter’s spirit by offering tributes of alcohol in the hopes of attaining good fortunes. Color shoots back into the frame and whip pans conjure the fervor of the viral spread of a new cult. More and more people flock to the shrine erected around the bike, donations pour in, and enterprising priests and investors begin to make and sell merchandise and “holy” wares for the blossoming faithful.

Much of Dug Dug’s second half plays out as an extended montage, which might have been wearisome if not for the fact that the film’s breakneck pace during this stretch is consistently deployed for comic effect, as well as reflective of how quickly ideas spread and beliefs solidify. “If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing,” said French philosopher Pascal. Pareek understands the essence of Pascal’s wager, namely that belief in God doesn’t depend upon rational evidence and that it has a reflex nature. As a reporter broadcasting from the shrine says at one point in the film, “There is a very fine line between faith and superstition,” barely able to disguise the fervor of belief that fills his voice, as if eager to pass it on.

Which isn’t to say that Pareek is overtly critical of religion. A genuine curiosity for the way faith takes root in those looking for something that serves an existential purpose undergirds his gleeful satire. Even Dug Dug’s denouement, which offers an especially disturbing glimpse at how groupthink can wear down reason, is marked by an empathetic understanding of the inkling of belief that can be exhumed from even the most rational of minds.