The Forest views feudal Indian society through the eyes of a young boy, Kitti, who is sent from the city to stay with a childless aunt and uncle in a remote village in Karnataka. Witness to increasingly violent hostilities between the village and its nearest neighboring village, as well as to the tension between his aunt and uncle, Kitti takes refuge in the awesome forest that lies between the two villages; its legendary dangers symbolize for him the frightening reality of adult
corruption.
Girish Karnad achieves a wealth of fascinating detail, and a kind of novelistic density in The Forest. He analyzes the socio-economic causes of rural violence, while utilizing to devastating effect a variety of mythological sources provided in the culture of the area.
Karnad is an important playwright in addition to being the central figure in the Kannada new wave of filmmaking - a movement which brought to the state of Karnataka a cinema in its own language, Kannada, about its own traditions and problems. Karnad's films include Once Upon a Time (see February 7), as well as scripts for Pattabhi Rama Reddy's Funeral Rites (March 5), and for the films of Shyam Benegal (March 22), in which he is also featured as an actor.