priyodit

Satyajit Ray used to sketch the scenes sometimes to help imagine how the scene would look like.

The keyword here is imagine, not Satyajit Ray.

A movie can be imagined as a painting on a canvas, where sometimes, the directors leave the unsaid for the viewers to imagine. However, such analogies of paintings and visuals serve well for the Rays and Kurosawas.

For Kandharis, however, I have a different analogy- if the story was a canvas, we would have none. If the movie was a sketch, this one was like watching the paint dry while still in its tin box.

The movie is mindnumbingly slow; it becomes soporific after 8 minutes.

Consider this, watching a woman sweeping the floor and mopping it couldn't be as thrilling as a James Bond sequence, or comic as Robin Williams. This happened at least 5 times, I counted. Then I zoned out and lost the count.

Between two scenes, there's a black screen for at least 1-2 seconds. It seems the director wanted to give the touch of 70s Hindi movies. While such blackouts happened then, it was due to editor's inefficiency or while changing the reels in the projector.

The husband sitting beside me asked his wife, "Did you insist for this film?" In his case, he was the victim of wife's failed plan. I was the victim of believing in Radhika Apte.

Watched this movie yesterday. I had gone with high expectations. It was because from the trailer, I could make out that movie had shoe string budget and black and white, just like Nolan's "Following". The good part of the movie is- it does not let you guess the turns which come at later part of the story but instead, keeps you along with itself all along the journey.

To me, it gave me the same pleasure as if "12 Angry Men" (constrained space) was mixed with "The Perfect Murder" in a Hitchcockian way (where some psychological angle is shown). This movie contrasts with Ram Gopal Varma's "Jungle" which presented the gruesomeness of human nature. Here, the jungle brings out not the aggressive but the manipulative and vulpine nature of people.

The director reminds me of Nagesh Kukunoor's style of film making where the scenes are crisp with realistic expression and skin tones being natural shade.

As a writer, the director did a fabulous work in imagining how each scene would unfold and has kept all the strings tied.

The actual hero of the movie was not only director but also the cameraman who almost always chose the right angle, except for one shot when the camera was too close to the faces. However, since this is a one shot movie, this error can be ignored.

This movie is recommended.