I walked into the theater with genuine anticipation, hoping-no, really wishing-that what I was about to see would unfold like a thoughtful documentary. A documentary, after all, would have allowed me to focus on the raw social questions embedded in your premise: the intersection of tradition and progress, the subtle hierarchies we all pretend not to notice, and the stubborn, almost invisible power lines that keep certain voices muffled. A documentary would have forced the lens to linger on lived reality, to let real people speak in their own cadence instead of being steam-rolled by flashy jump cuts. But what I got instead was a fiction feature that never committed to its own artifice. It hovered awkwardly-neither here nor there-like an unfinished sketch holding out a timid hand for validation.
Once I began to notice the technical cracks, the spell snapped. The editing, for instance, felt like someone shuffled a deck of precious moments and then lost the shuffle order halfway through. Scenes that should have carried the weight of an exhale were cut off in mid-breath; others that begged to be brisk lingered so long they practically begged for mercy. Continuity errors jarred me out of the story again and again. A cup half-full in one shot magically brimmed over in the next. A character who had stormed off screen left suddenly re-entered from the same side without explanation, as if the physical geography of the narrative had collapsed in on itself.
Then came the sound-oh, the sound. Sound mixing is supposed to do that invisible kind of magic where you don't notice how seamlessly you're slipping from score to dialogue to environmental texture. Here, it felt more like a tug-of-war. Dialogues murmured under their own background noise, as though the actors were confiding secrets we weren't meant to hear. Meanwhile, the score chose violence: it swelled, it shouted, and then it retreated at random, like an orchestra conducted by a flickering streetlight. I found myself leaning forward, straining, not because the drama gripped me but because I was literally straining to catch the lines over a swirl of competing frequencies. That's not immersion; that's exhaustion.
And since we're talking about the score, let's address the elephant in the auditorium: "Bhulan Kanda." I genuinely love that melody. It's haunting, it carries a folklore weight that could have deepened the film's cultural resonance. But the way it was deployed-on loop, at moments that neither needed nor earned it-turned that haunting into a relentless echo. By the fourth repetition, I wasn't moved; I was distracted. By the seventh, I was humming along out of sheer survival. You never want your audience whisper-singing the background track under their breath while pivotal dialogue is unfolding on screen-that's cinematic dissonance, not harmony.
What makes all of this especially frustrating is that I see the bones of a vital, urgent story underneath the mishmash. I see a filmmaker with something to say about class, about memory, about how communities negotiate the weight of their own history. But a message deserves a delivery mechanism that doesn't sabotage itself. When the craft falters-when the stitching shows, and worse, when it unravels-the message risks being dismissed as amateur hour instead of the rallying cry it could have been.
So here I am, writing this not just as a disappointed viewer but as someone who still believes you can do better. I want the next film to honor its own themes with the technical rigor they warrant. I want editing that breathes with purpose, sound design that guides instead of overwhelms, and music that complements rather than competes. I don't want to sigh, mid-screening, "I wish this were a documentary so I could focus on the social aspects." I want to be pulled so deeply into your narrative craft that the social critique pierces straight through me without the scaffolding ever showing.
I'm rooting for you, but rooting isn't passive-it's a plea. Shock me with your next film. Prove that you can wrestle the raw material of an idea into a finished work that stirs, provokes, and-above all-respects the audience's patience and passion.
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