Two movies at the Film Bazaar, which began its online edition on Saturday, spoke about change of heart and attitude. The second year on a virtual platform, the Bazaar, organised by the National Film Development Corporation of India, explored in Geometry Box (Telugu) how children grow up into uncaring human beings. Written and director by Sainath Ponna, it has a motley group of characters.
At the centre of it is the grandfather (Maula Virat Asoka Reddy) and his wife, Seshamma (Rukmini), whose endless wait in their remote village for a letter from their three grown-up children, Krishna (Giribabu), Giri (Sattanna) and Saroja (Lavanya Reddy) turn into despair. Finally, they get into a car driven by their Man Friday, Venu, (Vimplav), and set out to meet their children.
The journey is long, gets longer in the rickety old car, but when they reach their younger son Krishna’s home, they are in for a disappointment. Ditto, when they meet their daughter, Saroja, and their elder son, Giri. All of them have been lying to their parents about their marital status and financial positions. The one ray of hope comes in the form of Saroja’s daughter, Soumya (Lisi Ganesh), who is genial, caring, well educated and all set to fly away to the US on a job assignment. She is extremely loving towards her grandparents.
Geometry Box has very subtle messages. It examines caste impediments. Krishna is upset and angry that his father did not allow him to marry the girl of his choice because she was from a different background. Saroja is no less livid because her mother had been insensitive to her plight at home with a husband who was really cruel. Giri is in a financial mess.
Also, watch the way Venu is treated by the children, because they consider him no more than a servant. Soumya is the only one who respects him, and even begins to harbour romantic feelings for him! Might seem too exaggerated, though, and one feels here that the director is pushing a point to show us contrasting nature.
Also, the movie is far too long, a bane with much of Indian cinema. Obviously, the editor was not allowed to use his scissors to excise so many unnecessary sequences. Some of them go on for ever.
However, Geometry Box must be lauded for tacking some important social issues like dogmatism and caste barriers.
The other work, You Changed Me by Sudeesh Kanaujia, is just about 10 minutes, but makes its point clear – of how one needs just a single person to change attitudes. Lakhan is a driver (Dr Azad Jain), an educated one, and when he begins to pick and drop Radhika Apte (not the actress, but Anshu Varshney), he begins to see a change overtaking him. When she says that she is finicky about cleanliness, he understands that she is unhappy with the state of his cab. They get into conversations, and they are quite upbeat. A gripping work, well shot and imaginatively written by Jain. Executed too with precision. Short films are never easy to make, but Kanaujia manages to present a compelling work.
Both movies were part of the Industry Screenings. The Bazaar runs till November 25.
(Author, Commentator and Movie Critic has been covering the Film Bazaar for many years)
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