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★★
Directed by: #SwanandKottewar
Starring: #SawanKoul, #GitanjaliPillai, #JinalParekh, #NivedaVigraham, #HindolHazra, #NoelGeorge
Short film The Guy was written and directed by Swanand Kottewar and it tells the story of the guy as he dreams his life away stuck between paths he must choose to follow.
Right at the beginning the viewer is asked to have patience during the film. Viewers may be very glad this sign has been put there otherwise they may stop watching it early on. It’s not that the film becomes more interesting or better, it’s just that the #filmmakers were aware of how the film could be perceived and they preferred to warn us – this is a nice touch.
But onto the film...The short is a nightmarish trip through the protagonist’s (Sawan Koul) unconscious. As we see the first scene when he is speaking with a friend, who later turns out to be his kind of spiritual guide, he complains about his job and his lack of motivation. He’s changed jobs constantly and his friend advises him to stop this pattern and concentrate on his future. The advice is not followed by the “guy” as he goes to a party and smokes and drinks too much. From this scene the short cuts to a long dream sequence where the character has a conversation with his double. Albeit I did not understand what the characters were saying (due to lack of subtitles) I was able to identify that one character was his more contained self and the other one was a representation of his freer self. These two personifications of his unconscious seem to be arguing about his future – but one could only speculate.
This film was very hard to watch – audiences may struggle to understand what is going on. It was difficult to keep concentrated on the parts I couldn’t understand and when the characters were speaking English I had to concentrate because the voices weren’t clear.
The idea behind The Guy – a young artist trapped between two directions of his life – is interesting, especially treating a large amount of the film itself as dream sequences, leaving the audience to create his future, but, unfortunately, the execution didn’t meet the expectations.
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