A good short story, both creators and critics agree, requires way more skill than a novel. To roughly quote the poet Rabindranath Tagore, one has to conjure the ocean in a single drop of water, and that my friends, is no mean feat. The same theory applies to a short film vis-a-vis the feature film. The short film has to convey the entire gamut of layers and emotions of a feature in a much compressed time span. Hence, a short film requires to be bolstered with a really powerful screenplay without the scope of distractions.
And this is the first thing that strikes one about Teen Pehliyan, the tele-series produced by Kahaani director Sujoy Ghosh, which premiered on Star Plus and Hotstar on 29 April. Teen Pehliyan is a compilation of three short films, each about 40 - 45 minutes long, revolving around as the title hints, puzzles and mysteries. And as it is with the genre and the visual format, it is chiefly the screenplays that make or break the experience.
Goodluck
Directed by Sujoy Ghosh, Goodluck starts out with a really interesting premise, that of a salesman (Kunal Roy Kapur) selling good luck, literally, and what happens to the people who obtain his services.
Despite the clear influence of Satyajit Ray in the style of storytelling and a fairly good job by the cast, it is the screenplay that lets Goodluck down. Really down.
For starters, one wonders why there’s this compulsion to spoon-feed the audience perpetually with a cause-and-effect explanation - it’s something that’s forced into the narrative of Mirchi Malini as well. The thrill factor would have been considerably stronger without it.
And when the explanation comes, it’s so half-baked that it makes no sense whatsoever. And that’s what does Goodluck in.
Mirchi Malini
A “gastrologer”, Mirchi Malini (Paoli Dam) tells your fortune by tasting the food you cook. She knows your past and can shed light on your future with just that one bite. So when the gaudily dressed up woman sends a special dinner invite to four women after staying out of the limelight for two years, things get interesting.
Dam has given quite a few memorable performances in Bengali films, but here, she somehow fails to deliver to her full potential. Neither her deliberately staid voice nor the jazzy look make her “mysterious” as intended, and one is actually left more interested in the other women (little vignettes of good performances here) than the protagonist.
Sharper editing, especially towards the end, could have done wonders for Pratim D Gupta’s Mirchi Malini. And as we mentioned earlier, the cause-and-effect module is so forced, that it seems a little foolish really.
Copy
Easily the best of the three, Copy is about a man who creates a doppelgänger to lead double lives. Directed by Arindam Sil, it stars Vikrant Massey and Surveen Chawla in the lead. And here’s the first thing - can we please, please have more of Massey on the big screen? This guy is such a seemingly effortless powerhouse of talent that you wish the film lasted longer just so we can see some more of him.
Saying which, we are glad it didn’t.
While the story may not be an out and out original, the tightly knit screenplay keeps us hooked. It’s the only one of these three films which manages to “thrill” in the conventional sense.
But Copy has a very glaring flaw, and a strange one given the veritable technological starburst we are living under. In the scenes where the guy and his doppelgänger stand face to face, it’s SO obvious that they are not facing each other but looking somewhere to the side! It’s a very basic graphic job gone horribly wrong and not one you can easily un-notice.
All said and done however, Teen Pehliyan is a cool experiment. With some more focus on storytelling and production, projects like these might just give the audience some good reason to look forward to television time.
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