Sulemani Keeda

Sincere and touching in parts, this film could have soared with a stronger screenplay

Sulemani Keeda does prove that Indian film distribution is now decentralised enough to screen small independent movies for niche audiences. But it doesn’t prove that all these films will be little masterpieces. This work is intermittently absorbing, with the essential screenplay weakness of your average big-budget film—a story that starts well, loses its way completely and then recovers towards the end.

It is based on two writer friends who have a script in hand called Sulemani Keeda (pain in the butt) and go around hawking it to sceptical producers who do their damnedest to talk around the project, avoid commitment of any kind and offer solace in philosophical meandering. This is just up Mahesh Bhatt’s street and he is wonderful as he plays himself, an avuncular guru, holding forth about experiencing the true meaning of existence, a lurid movie poster strategically placed behind him.

Later, the writers, Dulal (Naveen Kasturia) and Mainak (Mayank Tewari), meet a drug-addled son of a producer, appropriately called Gonzo, who wants them to do some Gonzo- style writing—a movie idea without a story, with plenty of sex and shot like an Andrei Tarkovsky film.

Clearly, writer and director Amit V Masurkar is talking about the nightmare of a cinema-literate person struggling to maintain a semblance of artistic integrity in a marginally creative but mainly transactional movie city. Mumbai is as important a character in this film, as is the cynical movie business, and the loneliness and despair of a young cinephile with ambition and faith in his art and city comes through very well. Particularly moving is a scene where Dulal asks his new girlfriend, Ruma (Aditi Vasudev), packing for studies in the US, not to leave him. As she gently takes time to explain why she has to go, you see the emptiness of his life unfold before him. For this poignant and truthful sequence alone, Sulemani Keeda is worth a watch.

Aditi VasudevAmit V MasurkarMayank TewariNaveen Kasturia