Photograph: A review
What are actors supposed to do when they are expected to think in a movie? When words are not allowed to be crutched upon, when their gaze does all the talking, and they are vulnerable at best and lost at worst. Who is going to tell what is going on — the actor on the screen or the viewer in his seat?
These were some of the myriad thoughts I harboured while watching Photograph (2019). Starring Nawazuddin Siddique and Sanya Malhotra as the two protagonists who aren’t meant to be together, this cinematic piece of Mumbai isn’t for everyone. However, if you are from that sweet heartbreak of a city, you must watch it. Yes, it’s artistic, not for the heck of it, but because the story demands it.
For what it’s worth, coming back to the questions we are dealing with today: Nawazuddin spends a hell lot of time in this movie just thinking. While he’s alone. While he’s amongst his friends. While he is with the woman he knows isn’t for him. While his grandma is chewing his ears with gems of wisdom. He is thinking a lot with those brown blank eyes fixated in to the distance.
Maybe, thanks to these moments of silence, we tend to focus on what his character has to say. From his heartwarming pitch (loose translation: “Let me click a picture of yours — only the sunlight on your face will remain, everything else from the wind in your hair to the noise in your ears will be forgotten; only the sunlight on your face will remain.”) at the Gateway of India to his conversation on the balcony with a ghost, he connects us to the movie. The photograph is merely an excuse; the photographer is what you’ll be interested in.
Those blessed with impatience might rue that the movie dwells on way too long — a nicer way of saying that it’s slow — but why should silence be compromised at the cost of words? Why should the protagonist not take the opportunity to think deeply, sometimes so deeply that he is lost in his thoughts, and begins to look lonely in the crowd? If the viewer can zone out in the cinema hall, then so can he?
Somewhere, as you move through the pieces, you realize that Sanya’s character complements Nawazuddin. She also thinks a lot and speaks so little. And yet in their coincidental silence, you connect the dots of their respective existential crisis. She might be an academic superstar but she is not happy with the way her life is going. On the other hand, he is willing to deceive his beloved grandma with theatrics. When both these individuals are silent, they are plotting an escape. Whether they end up escaping together is best left to imagination.
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the grandma again. To me, she is a metaphor for Bombay. She is chatty, benevolent, courageous and knows the right from the wrong. Unlike the old lady in Dhobi Ghat (2010), she is far from silent. This dadi-ma notices everything around her and will wait for the right time to let the protagonists know that she already knows they are acting.
