Manav Kaul’s Tathagat, streaming on Mubi, opens to a bald man (Harish Khanna), wearing a monk-like robe, in a snowy north Indian village. He speaks to a bald kid, as if talking to a younger version of himself. The film soon cuts from the ‘dream’ sequence to a more ‘real’ world. The same old man but with flowing hair and beard, wearing a bemused expression. His aunt has died, and something snaps inside him. He becomes disoriented and disconsolate, remembering her and his younger self, played by that boy in the first scene. The opening makes much more sense now, implying the crux of Tathagat: that it is about a man searching for the child he once was, excavating his memories to make a crucial correction — a lack that has haunted his entire life.The past is set in a similar hilly hamlet. We find out more about the young boy (Himanshu Bhandari), Suraj, and his family. It comprises a mother, a father and an aunt. The father is a professional clown, who struggles to find work. He’s a clown otherwise, too: a drunkard, a wastrel, a liar. His wife tells him to not drink, yet he drinks every day; she refuses to give him food. So, the boy can only reach out to his aunt for some affection and comfort. He enjoys chatting with her and asks her to bathe him. Until she, too, finds something else: the attention of a young man, who bullies Suraj.The film often cuts between the past and the present, as Suraj’s childhood has materialised with a new wounding force. The past is not just a mélange of memories; it is also a jigsaw puzzle: It hides roots of his restlessness, clues for his salvation. The visual language, too, complements the hazy recollection and untethered transitions: several frames are blurry, the cuts dissolve. Besides, another character in the present, Amar (Ghanshyam Lalsa), Suraj’s disciple, has an uneasy relationship with the world he’s left behind. His grandfather often shows up, telling him to return and become a doctor.The flashbacks reveal characters and open the story with minimal fuss. The scenes between the father and the boy are often moving: a bumbling man going beyond his means to make his son laugh. The relationship’s discomfiting climax also hides in plain sight: that despite his best intentions, the father eventually chose bottle over his son. Even seemingly small scenes in the past — such as Suraj failing to bring bangles for his aunt — acquire haunting urgency in the present. And then we find out the main reason for his despair: a guilt, a terrible guilt, that has shackled him for decades.Tathagat is a vintage ‘mood piece’. Beyond a point, it doesn’t have a story as such. And it makes sense, for it’s a movie about those stuck between home and destination — home, a place that no longer exists, and destination, an abstraction that eludes and obfuscates. Befitting such themes, both Suraj and Amar spend a lot of time wondering about the “pursuit of truth”, the impossibility of a resolution. Tathagat, as a result, almost speaks to us as two different films: the childhood portion, driven by stories and characters, is rooted in the mundane, while the segment on Amar and an adult Sanjay is informed by a philosophical bent.It doesn’t always work. In fact, it is here that Tathagat’s glaring flaws emerge. Like many forgettable arthouse fares, these portions don’t arrive at meanings through visual and aural filmmaking — a blend of images, sound, and other technical finesse — but through reams of dialogues. Some of them do have something new to say — I especially liked that bit where Suraj wonders about the impossibility of grasping complete happiness, especially for afflicted souls like him, comparing it to a bird pecking on a small piece even when the whole bread is available. Or the recurring visual composition of both a young and an old Suraj looking outside through the iron grills of his room, locked in an eternal prison craving escape.But such scenes are outliers, not the norm. Suraj’s near-constant voiceover in the present is fixated on pressing meanings on the film and, eventually, us. Sometimes the dialogues lack context, keeping us indifferent. Sometimes they’re plain pretentious (“Soul! There is no such thing like soul. All of it so far away, and my far-sightedness is getting weaker”). The acting is often uneven and laboured — even embarrassing at times — with only Bhandari and Lalsa producing consistently credible performances.The biggest flaw in this film, however, is not philosophical but logical. The film, for instance, keeps trying to establish a connection between the young and the old Suraj, drawing multiple through-lines between his past and present — implying that him being a monk was also a form of escape. Here’s the thing though: Suraj seems to be in his late 50s at least (perhaps even older); the child doesn’t look more than eight years old (perhaps even younger). What happened in between, you wonder, during those five long decades? Did time heal or destroy him further — how did he cope all those years, who was he all those years? The 84-minute drama treats time like a switch, operating in just two modes.In Kaul’s directorial, the word “Tathāgata”, which has had varying interpretations for eons, indicates a state that just is, beyond the notions of coming and going. Suraj struggles to attain that sense of being right till the end — though the final shot hints at a lasting solace — and so does the film. The protagonist and the movie eventually coalesce into one, but the audience is locked out of that embrace.