It's quite clear from the title that this film is about oppression. And as is wont of most films on the topic, they tend to be pretty unsettling. Pairon Talle Soul of Sand is a strange film: on one hand, it is raw, deeply disturbing and complex. But on the other it is also graphic, shallow and simplistic
Pairon Talle
A; Drama
Dir: Sidharth Srinivasan
Cast: Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Avatar Sahani, Saba Joshi
**
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Bhanu Kumar (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) is a meek watchman, solo employee at a long shut-down silica mine. He lives at its rundown premises on the outskirts of Delhi with his wife. His employer Lakhmichand Ahlawat (Avatar Sahani) is an arrogant exploitative oaf, who insults Bhanu and screws Bhanu’s unwilling wife after sending him off on errands. Unable to run it profitably, Ahlawat wants to get rid of the disputed mine to an old man as dowry for marrying his young daughter.
Without knowing that it is his employer’s daughter, Bhanu somehow gets embroiled in the girl’s bid to elope with her lover and escape a masked murderer out to kill them. Things quickly spiral out of control a spate of unnecessary and inexplicable violence and a bloody climax follows.
The film has its heart in place; the stillness, the mood is just right. Dibyendu, whom you shall also see in Chittagong, is competent. Some of the visual ideas in Siddharth Srinivasan’s film are also evocative of the oppressive nature of its theme. However some things don’t add up: all that unexplained mystery around the masked murderer, the signs of black magic, the significance of the handprint outside Bhanu’s residence. u00a0