Watch Kriti, there's still hope for short films in India

Bollywood is not known for its short films, but the rise of online media has enabled a number of directors to release films averaging 20 minutes directly to the audience. Earlier, it was the occasional short film that made the limelight.

2003’s Bypass showed the early promise of Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Irrfan Khan. In 2007, Farhan Akhtar made Positive, about a young man who contracts AIDS.

Since 2010, however, the ubiquity of YouTube has engendered a healthy renaissance in short films. In 2013, Anurag Kashyap released That Day After Everyday, a 22-minute film on eve teasing, on the video-sharing website. In 2015, Sujoy Ghosh released Ahalya, the tale of a seductress who, together with her male consort, enchants young men to their demise. The film was a reworking of the story of Ahalya from Ramayana.

It is now the turn of Shirish Kunder to jump on the bandwagon. Kunder, who has directed such duds as Jaaneman and Joker, released an eighteen-minute film called Kriti on YouTube on June 22. Starring Manoj Bajpayee and Radhika Apte, the film is about a mentally ill patient who makes for a dangerously unreliable narrator.

Watch Kriti here:

In the opening scene, Sapan, a writer, is sitting across from his therapist, Kalpana. We learn that Sapan has fallen in love with Kriti, also a writer, who suffers from agoraphobia (fear of social interactions). As the film proceeds, the doctor tries assiduously to set up a meeting with Kriti, for she fears that Sapan’s lover is all in his head.

The film employs techniques from classic psychological thrillers like Psycho and Shutter Island to retain a taut hold on the narrative. I watched the film twice to see if the initial scenes with the therapist dovetailed with what comes later. They do.

The film presents the danger of imminent violence, which is ably executed without resorting to lazy narrative loopholes.

Given its premise, the film could have easily become a jaded psychodrama, but it manages to thrill. The ending that I expected, and one I was certain of halfway into the film, was not delivered, earning the film points for novelty.

The film does have its flaws. Kriti is too chirpy a character to believably suffer from crippling social anxiety. Contextually, the film does not seem Indian, in that it stays within the confines of the characters’ private lives without any scope of family or friends intervening.

Which is a bit of a stretch even for the high-net-worth setting it aspires for. That’s the other thing: how do two people in a down-and-out profession like writing afford a dreamy standalone house in a metropolis?

But if the film points to a return to relevance for Kunder, who is more known for his tweets than his films, it may serve its purpose after all.

As for its actors, both Apte and Bajpayee are in their element. Apte’s career graph has been rising steadily since her breakout role in 2011’s Shor in the City. Her most recent release, Phobia, about a woman suffering from severe agoraphobia (the phobia of choice for our filmmakers, it would seem), has also been widely appreciated.

Radhika Apte in Phobia:

For Bajpayee too, this year has been a good one. He played the gay Aligarh Muslim University professor, Ramchandra Siras in Aligarh, a film that sparked a conversation on the blockheadedness of Section 377, which criminalises consensual homosexual acts.

Coincidentally, both Apte and Bajpayee have recently appeared in other well-received short films. Apte starred in both That Day After Everyday and Ahalya. As for Bajpayee, he played a financially struggling cop in this year’s Taandav. A wry comedy, the film capitalised on Bajpayee’s ability to deliver gravitas even in a madcap setting.

Short films are a wildly popular genre in the West. Hollywood has had a long tradition of storied directors like Stephen Daldry and Sofia Coppola starting their careers with short films. The short film can also be a precursor to full-length features. Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash started its journey as a short film that gathered buzz at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

The trend seems to be catching on in India too. Both Nagraj Manjule (Fandry, Sairat) and Riteish Batra (The Lunchbox) began their careers with short films, but then they are dyed-in-the-wool auteurs.

With Bollywood now taking this genre seriously, there is hope for better short-form content emerging from the industry’s mostly tasteless bowels.