S.H.O.R.T.S | Anurag Kashyap's Revolution

Anurag Kashyap came forward with another out of the box concept, and left his audience pondering with messages conveyed in five short movies. ‘SHORTS’, under the co-production of AKFPL, is the collection of 5 short movies by 5 different directors. This was for the first time that such a concept was presented on silver screens. Each short movie has the cinematography so brilliant that the perception of audience will get enthralled. 

I live in Durgapur, and this movie was not released in theatres here. I had been waiting for the official release of the movie’s DVDS, and day before yesterday was the day when I finally grabbed my copy of the DVD.

Ever since I watched Anurag sir’s first movie released in theatres, ‘Dev-D’, I became the hardcore fan of him. His abilities to portray the characters he all writes by himself most of the time, is so exceptional. After Dev-D, I watched ‘Gulaal’, ‘Black Friday’ and ‘No-Smoking’, and through the process of watching these movies one after another, in course of time my attachment with him grew stronger. ‘SHORTS’, I watched yesterday, and I am so much moved by the quality of cinema that I can’t separate myself from the movie effect.

Anurag Kashyap is the figure in the Bollywood industry at present who has worked very hard and worked with so many people in order to bring the ‘Good’ cinema into existence. As Nawazuddin Siddiqui said in one of his interviews with media persons that ‘Good’ cinema is something which brings you close to the reality; the reality that exists around us, connecting with which is very easy. Till date India had been producing the cinema which evolved from a superficial and hypothecated world where things used to take place of cinematic origin. We can easily bifurcate that this is cinema, so things are going on this way. But now, with movies like Black Friday, Udaan, and even short movies like those compiled by Anurag sir for his film ‘SHORTS’, they seem so realistic, and the lasting effect of such cinema is prolonged.

‘SHORTS’ starts with ‘Sujata’, the short movie starring Huma Qureshi. Child abuse and harassment, and the fight of the same child against this till she grows up, will set you glued to your seats. Then follows ‘The Epilogue’, which shows the story of a girl madly in love, but I really cannot get the real meaning of this short film by Siddhartha Gupt. The third short movie was ‘Aashapordha’, a Bengali movie, which shows emotional trauma under which a teen girl goes, as the consequence of her drunkard father, who behaves very badly with her and her mom. I was waiting for the short movie starring Nawazuddin sir, and he came in ‘Mehfuz’. The last movie, ‘Shor’, which depicts story of a Bihari couple living in a big city. Clashes used to take place in between the couple because of unnecessary obligations by the protagonist’s mother. I found the concept of this movie the most remarkable one as compared to other four movies. ‘Shor’ is very much meaningful, and poetic. While I said poetic, I must not overlook ‘Mehfuz’ which starts with Gulzar Sahab’s poetry: ‘Death you are a poem. And a poem has promised to meet me’. Nawaz has left an impression, that too without even any dialogue, that death is something which really brings peace, sets you tugged in arms of permanent safety.

If you have been consistently looking for big banner movies and overlooking these gems which Indian film industry has started to come up with lately, then I think you are missing out the beauty and artistic multitudes of Indian Cinema. The changing face of cinema in India is very vivid, very much straightforward that hits you directly in your heart.