Cast: Shreya Dhanwanthary, Priyanshu Painyuli, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Saqib Saleem, Ashish Verma, Sam Mohan, Darshana Rajendran, Lakshvir Singh saran, Neena Kulkarni, Nagraj Manjule
Directors: Nupur Asthana, Ayappa KM, Ruchir Arun, Shikha Makan, Nagraj Manjule
BLUF
Unpaused is an anthology of five stories about how the pandemic has changed our lives and the reality of our world.
While it thematically maintains the storytelling of the first anthology that was released in December 2020, Unpaused: Naya Safar seems more brazen in its assessment of the toll that the global pandemic and series of lockdowns have taken on us. The stories present a thematic sense of perseverance about exploring how we are racing against time and how helpless we are in the face of this human calamity.
WATCH THE REVIEW HERE
THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES
The series explores human reactions and conditions during the pandemic with five human stories from the fate of a young Mumbai couple with cushy corporate jobs and a Parel apartment to the struggles of a marginalized attendant at a cremation ground.
The cremation ground is the location of the action in the most striking of these five stories – Nagraj Manjule’s Vaikunth. The last of the five shorts, it is impressive, overpowering, and unwavering but eventually unsympathetic in its appeal to portray the reality in the face. Reminds us of the horrors of April-May 2021 narrated by the protagonist at the frontline of the cremations (played by Manjule himself).
Ayappa K.M.’s War Room, powered by an outstanding performance by Geetanjali Kulkarni as Sangeeta Waghmare, a Covid war room worker who finds herself in a quandary when she receives a call that throws up a bad memory from two years ago. She sees in that plea for help an occasion to seize for herself the justice that she feels has eluded her.
The Couple is a brilliant and blustery plot that speaks about a very real problem that young professionals have had to deal with during the pandemic. Directed by Nupur Asthana, the story is set in an apartment occupied by a working-from-home couple, Akriti (Shreya Dhanwanthary) and Dippy (Priyanshu Painyuli).
While one works for an FMCG company, the other is a product development executive with a global company – all is hunky-dory until the wife is sacked over a zoom call. Her low self-esteem drives the couple apart as Dippy comes to terms with the trauma of being laid off even though she delivered the product. She sums it up as. “I feel like I got dumped,” she says. “It’s a job, not a relationship,”
Dhanwanthary and Painyuli look perfect as the couple who seem to thrive on drawing from each other’s energies and modern, urban marriage in the time of a pandemic.
Ruchir Arun’s Teen Tigada, is the story of Chandan (Saqib Saleem), Dimple (Ashish Verma), and Ajeet (Sam Mohan) who steal a van loaded with expensive electronic appliances and hide it in an abandoned factory until a buyer is found for the consignment.
Gond Ke Laddu, written and directed by Shikha Makan, starts out in Agra in the home of a widow, Sushila (Neena Kulkarni), who does not trust technology or online transactions but decides to take the risk and send her daughter a box of home-made ladoos to celebrate the birth of a baby. The delivery boy Rohan (Lakshvir Saran) meets with an accident but his feisty wife Geeta (Darshana Rajendran) comes up with an audacious plan to still deliver the ladoos. Gond Ke Laddu celebrates hope and humanity in the face of adversity
IN THE KNOW
Unlike the first Unpaused, released in late 2020, this lot of shorts does not use tangential methods to comment on our collective response to the pandemic. The camera work is superlative throughout the series. In Nagraj Manjule’s Vaikunth , the camera briefly lingers on what is written on one of the walls of the crematorium: Yahaan ameer aur gareeb ka bistar ek hi hota hai (The beds here are the same for the rich and the poor). In War Room, Director of photography Tassaduq Hussain makes every shot count in this story set in a dark, dingy hive of activity where the phones never stop ringing and everybody is on edge because they are dealing with human trauma.
WHAT WE LOVED:
The storytelling
Direction
WHAT WE MISSED
Length
