Shirish Kunder has two personalities. He is a master of wits on Twitter, cracking brilliant one-liners on politics, social issues, cinema and everything under the sun several times a day. He is also the director of mediocre Bollywood flicks like Jaan E Mann and Joker. The real Shirish Kunder may never stand up, but his latest venture, an 18-minute-long short film titled Kriti, is a hint.
In Kriti, Manoj Bajpai plays Sapan, a man who is unable to separate the real from the unreal. A loner, his only friend is a psychiatrist, a beautiful woman with deep, enigmatic eyes (Radhika Apte), who claims that she knows Sapan ‘better than he knows himself’. The film begins with Sapan telling her that he has found the love of his life – a writer named Kriti. The psychiatrist thinks Kriti could be just another figment of his imagination, like Rachana, an imaginary girlfriend he used to have, whom he had to get rid of eventually. The doctor’s opinion is not without reason. The words ‘Kriti’ and ‘Rachana’, translate as ‘creation’. Sapan is confused, so are the viewers.
Kunder’s film is tricky and engaging. It is backed by fine performances of Bajpai and Apte. It artfully hides clues everywhere – in surrealist artefacts, in a portrait of Frida Kahlo in the psychiatrist’s room, in the mannequins and art installations in Kriti’s apartment, and even in the enigma in Apte’s voice.
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Radhika Apte’s indecipherable gaze and powerful body-language are among Kriti‘s high spots. She, like in Sujay Ghosh’s Ahalya, outperforms her co-stars in every scene. Manoj Bajpai, tactfully underplays his role as the bewildered Sapan.
However, Kriti could have been more subtle. For one, when Sapan is convinced of Kriti’s non-existence, he says that aloud. The name game in the film (there is a secret hidden in every character’s name) betrays the plot by being plainly apparent. And the background music, loud and ominous, plays spoilsport.
Watch the film here: