Ahalya

Time and again, we keep complaining about how Indian cinema gives us no-brainer movies which are mindless. Sujoy Ghosh shuts us up with this 14-minute short film, once and for all.

Ahalya, Sujoy’s mastermind, starts off with a policeman, Indra Sen (Tota Roy Chowdhary) entering Ahalya’s house (Radhika Apte) to question her husband Goutam Sadu, an artist (Soumitra Chatterjee) in connection with the disappearance of a young man.

The plot takes a twist when a doll falls down from a side table in the hall as soon as Indra enters the house and Ahalya exclaims how strange it is that the dolls fall whenever someone new enters the house. What is spooky is the fact that the doll is precisely modeled on the man who is missing.

From thereon, Sujoy takes you for a ride in this wonderful thriller where there are twists and turns every other minute, leaving you no time to even dissect or comprehend what is happening. The climax is quite shocking and involves some amount of thinking (at least) from the reader’s end to unravel and understand the ending.

Radhika Apte does a brilliant job as the seductress/wife of an aging artist. Tota and Soumitra are subtle with their acting and give nuanced performances. You would think there isn’t much one can do when it comes to technical aspects in a short film. But Sujoy proves you wrong by taking intricate care of even minute details. The videography and lighting in the movie is brilliant and Ghosh is clever with his choice of camera shots to heighten viewers’ senses and keep them hooked.

Give this movie a shot if you miss watching great movies in this “Dilwale” age. Ahalya isn’t a full-length feature film, but trust me. Sujoy does so much more in 14 minutes than some manage to do in two and a half hours.