Saturday, July 8, 2017

Chutney - movie review

Short movies are gaining momentum like never before. Video channels that host them have almost as wide a reach as the smartphones now-a-days. Whoever has a smartphone is likely to have access to YouTube or the likes. And with the pace, that this genre is making progress with, comes naturally the content that is more rich and interesting. It keeps improving, new ideas keep coming up and new experiments take place more fearlessly, and thus with more creative freedom. Also, this genre has started attracting well established actors/directors from the Indian entertainment industry. One such movie caught my attention that starred one of my favorites -Tisca Chopra.

The movie is titled Chutney, and aptly so, as you'd figure out after you'd watched it. It is produced by Tisca Chopra and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra under the banner LargeShortFilms, so there's expected to be some 'content' in it. Tisca Chopra is accompanied by another big-shot of Indian film industry - Adil Hussain, and Rasika Dugal - whose acting capabilities must have left the experts wondering by now. She is mostly seen in off-beat movies and non-conventional shows, so maybe not very well known among many.

This 17 minutes story is a mystery set in a colony - Model Town, and starts with a social get-together scene where women are taking about...well, what they talk about usually (other women), and men...are just being men, you know! The first scene itself, if followed carefully, sets the tone of what follows. That's the key for enjoying this story - watching it and listening to whatever is said by whoever with total attention, every character and every dialog has a purpose. A short story has to wrap its content within a definite time frame, so packing the information and making it succinct is much needed.

It is, for the most part, a narrative by Tisca's character - a house wife originally from Ghaziabad and portrayed to be gullible, rather stupid. But unlike the narratives which we have usually seen, it shows two different (or parallel, but complementary) pieces to make the story complete. Tisca's character's story telling is accompanied by the visuals, which really don't go fully by the story being told but tell the actual story nonetheless. So that's a wonderful experiment I'd say.

Throughout the story-telling, the real character of Tisca Chopra keeps unveiling itself, which is actually not of a simple, stupid and submissive housewife, but of a manipulative, shrewd and a cold-blooded woman. What starts off as a cozy morning for Rasika Dugal in the neighborhood of Model Town turns out to blow her mind and drop her jaw. And all the mystery is executed in the end by a simple, unpretentious statement by Tisca's character and with a gradually zooming out aerial shot.

Tisca steals the show, being the protagonist and the mysterious character she turns out to be. Her make-up also deserves a thumbs-up, done so well that it took me while to recognize her (well, honestly took me the whole movie running time). And on top of that, her body-language and the dialect she takes on totally goes with the character.


Rasika Dugal is as charming as she always is, very natural and comfortable in her skin. Adil Hussain has some impact of his personality, that is his unique trait.

If you haven't watched it yet, its time. A good script, executed with love and resulting in perfection...is a rare phenomenon. Happy watching!


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