Shoojit Sircar’s latest film, a true story-based drama, I Want To Talk, is a film that I found myself struggling to assign a genre or type. I walked out of the theater with a smile because the final takeaway from seeing the eventful life of Arjun Sen gave me a sense of hope. But the path the movie has taken to show that realistic shade of hope shows you the uneasy side of life. Structured as this journey of a man who was supposed to live for a hundred days but successfully completed more than ten thousand, this gentle story of someone who stubbornly believes he is not at all manipulative is quite rewarding in ways that are difficult to verbalize. Maybe I will have to watch it over and over with a notebook in my hands to point out precisely why it gives comfort.
Arjun Sen is a Bengali who moved to the US as a marketing professional. He is an extremely talkative person who thinks only about being productive. At one point, Arjun gets diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, and the doctors tell him that things are looking pretty bleak. What we see in the film I Want To Talk is the resilience of this man who went on living for more than what was expected from him by doing almost 20 major surgeries at various points in his life.
Anyone who may get to hear the Arjun Sen story may think about making a different kind of Kal Ho Na Ho using this character. But what is admirable about this Shoojit Sircar film is how it keeps Arjun a flawed and adamant guy while it uses the transitions and events in the life of this person to explore other characters. The major relationship dynamic we see evolve in the movie is Arjun’s equation with his daughter, Reya. In the first half, we see her as this small child who is unaware of the anxiety and pain Arjun is going through. In the second half, when the grown-up version of Reya is striking practical conversations with Arjun, he realizes how his failed marriage has impacted the life of his daughter.
The relationship between this Bengali father and his only daughter will definitely take you back to the Shoojit Sircar classic, Piku. The way Arjun gives thumbs up to the breakup news or how he always doubts the intentions of Reya’s boyfriend will definitely remind you of senior Bachchan from Piku. Another character with relatively minimal screen time yet leaves a pretty lasting impact because of the empathy shown by that character was the nurse Nancy. How Nancy found a connection with Arjun and what eventually happens in her life was one of those signature Shoojit Sircar ways of creating a great character without spoon-feeding much about the emotional space of a character.
In certain ways, I found this film to be Shoojit Sircar’s protest against the kind of sympathy films we see about the change that happens to people who are about to die. The script written by Ritesh Shah is not trying to make Arjun a perfect man over the course of his treatment. The humor we find in this movie is basically due to the unwillingness of Arjun to not be his usual self. The conversations of Arjun with his doctor, Jayant Deb, are hilarious because of how he sort of manipulates even a doctor to do surgeries (the character denies it, though.) In those areas, Shoojit Sircar is masking the ultimate tragedy using the Baskhor Banerjee kind of “insensitive” humor.
When you look at the whole journey of the character and how Sircar has treated it, it seems like the filmmaker wanted the people to learn about him, not from a lens of sympathy. We see him in the beginning as this marketing guy stubborn about the length of the money shot in a Pizza advertisement. At the interval point, at the peak of his uncertain health, he is still a nosy dad with trust issues. The movie has this enormous task of covering almost three decades. So, choosing which event to focus on is somewhat shaping this movie. And the biggest risk associated with the film also lies in the selection of those events. While there are certain events that are explored in a swift and funny way, Sircar and his editor Chandrashekhar Prajapati give enough space for certain chapters to maneuver the viewer to how they want the audience to look at this movie. For instance, the footage percentage is longer for the doctor when compared to a nurse who showed more compassion towards Arjun.
Guru may have been considered as the best performance of Abhishek Bachchan. But for me, that changes with I Want To Talk as the actor fearlessly plunges into an imperfect character with zero vanity. To portray extreme vulnerability and persistence, with believable physical transformation, Abhishek goes all out to make Arjun Sen a spectacular performance. Ahilya Bamroo, as the elder version of Reya (her voice reminded me of Parvathy Thiruvoth,) performed her part so fluently. After a point, we can see the movie shifting its perspective from Arjun to Reya, and Ahilya’s performance had that heft to be the narrator. Naivedhi Pearle Dey, as the younger Reya, was also really impressive. Jayant Kriplani, as Arjun’s doctor, was fun to watch, and the interactions between these characters are easily the funniest in the film. It was like those argument scenes in Piku featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Irrfan Khan. Kristin Goddard, as the nurse Nancy, delivered a memorable performance.
At the end of I Want To Talk, you will have a smile on your face, and it is not really because of one central character you saw in that movie. The small role of Johny Lever in this movie has his character tell Arjun that you are either dead or you are not. There is no such thing as you almost died. It might sound like a Golmaal-ish Johny Lever thing to say. But somewhere, I feel the reason why Arjun Sen found the energy to go through all these surgeries and put up a fight against death was all these big and small people who came into his life in that phase. If you are someone who has not lost the ability to watch softly paced movies in this 30-second reel era, watching I Want To Talk would give you a feeling of getting a gentle, reassuring pat on the back.
If you are someone who has not lost the ability to watch softly paced movies in this 30-second reel era, watching I Want To Talk would give you a feeling of getting a gentle, reassuring pat on the ba
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
