Movie Review : Siddharth: The Prisoner

Film: Siddharth: The Prisoner (Thriller)
Cast: Rajat Kapoor, Sachin Nayak
Direction: Pryas Gupta
Duration: 1 hour 34 minutes
Critic’s rating:***

There's a whole new breed of filmmakers who are trying to find a foothold in Bollywood with their different background. These are the cine-literate folks who have learnt their craft from French, Italian, Iranian art house cinema and their philosophy from existentialists like Kafka and Camus. Small wonder then, director Pryas Gupta chooses to pay tribute to Albert Camus' 1942 classic, The Stranger (L'Etranger) by having our hero pick up a copy from the footpath and walking off lovingly with it. Only this time, the book has been written by Siddharth Roy (Rajat Kapoor), the hero who missed the Booker and somehow ended up in jail. Don't know why. Don't need to know, perhaps.

Having paid his tribute, the director gets on with the business of storytelling. Again an ambiguous, teasing exercise that sees you following our protagonist on his silent jaunts in the streets of Mumbai, as he tries to rebuild his life, after a stint in prison. Having been separated from his wife, he lives in a decrepit room and pounds on a typewriter, creating the new Booker-winning manuscript. Unfortunately, the manuscript gets exchanged for an ungodly wad of notes in a cyber cafe. While the cyber cafe boy (Sachin Nayak) desperately hunts for the underworld's moolah, our writer launches a frenzied search for his manuscript. In between, he takes a break to rebuild bridges with his three-year-old son, only to realise that despite being free, he has carried his prison within him.

A metaphorical film about freedom and desire, the film keeps you engrossed. Firstly, by its explorations on the leitmotif of greed. And secondly, due to Rajat Kapoor's nuanced, almost minimalist act of a man in torment.