An honest review of I Want to Talk

A postmortem of Shoojit Sircar's latest

Shootjit Sircar feels like he is a part of my family. Watching his 2015 film Piku made me believe that he was a fly on the wall of my house in his past life. I felt seen, heard, made fun of and loved. That’s what Sircar manages to do. He makes you fall in love with versions of yourself that you see in his characters. Well, except for I Want to Talk.

I believe Sircar’s ability to make light of difficult situations and present it unembellished is what makes his work nestle into our hearts. His “low-budget look,” his shakey camera, his imperfectly lit scenes allow us entry into the emotions he is presenting. He does so with tactfully written dialogue and a plot that, well, isn’t really a plot. It develops, moves, swims and he simply takes us on the journey. His way of telling stories elecits emotions that we want to box up and take home as a parcel. When the going gets tough, we like to take them out, air it out, feel it, and put it back in. His movies feel safe, warm and comfortable.

I Want to Talk makes you feel uncomfortable. Arjun Sen, an advertising bigwig is suddenly diagnosed with laryngeal cancer. Life as he knows it comes to a startling halt. The months following his diagnosis are excruciating, between surgeries and divorce proceedings, Sen loses almost everything. His house, his wife, quality time with his young daughter and his ability to talk. The film follows Sen’s life as he moves from cancer to cancer, surgery to surgery, withstanding it all.

The film has Shoojit Sircar written all over it and not just because of the dad-jokes. In it’s comedic tone, it’s rough treatment and honest performances, Sircar’s finest characteristics as a director are front and centre. However, the film lacks connection. By the end of it, I found myself not caring for a man who went through 20-odd surgeries. That’s not right. I think the script is at fault.

Spoilers ahead.

We do not get more than 10 minutes with pre-diagnosis Arjun Sen. When he collapses after coughing up blood, we think of the typical archetype of an invincible man who crumbles due to the unexpectedness of life. And if the film had continued in this vein, we would have believed it. But Arjun Sen, as we slowly discover, is in fact a funny person, who didn’t just ignore his family and work himself silly. He isn’t the typical “advertising bigwig” that we thought, he is, and has always been human.

The film failed at establishing a foundation for his character. For telling us enough about him before his diagnosis so that we could feel something when he did get diagnosed. His character and characteristics were told to us through a series of Chinese whispers, I felt. Scenes that rather unclearly connected with each other and, as a result, drew a vague picture of Sen’s characer.

Sircar seems to be in love with father-daughter duos. In I Want to Talk, Sen’s relationship with his daughter is perplexing. She seems completely ambivalent to her father’s sickness until the end, where she joins him as he valiantly tries to complete a marathon after a life of ill-health. (Yet another Sircar motif. Remember Bhaskor Chakraborty in Piku, cycling to his death?) But what he does, extremely successfully, is make sure that we as an audience understand that when the going gets tough, it will pass.

I Want to Talk is based on the real-life story of Arjun Sen. A man who got over 20 surgeries and lived on various medications through his life. If a man like that, we think as an audience, can go through hell and still crack a joke, we have hope. Abhishekh Bacchan as Arjun Sen is excellent. Simply excellent. The son of Amitabh Bacchan is no longer the son of Amitabh Bacchan, he is his own actor. He surrenders to the role with such grace that we forget who the actor even is. He forgoes vanity, fame, screen-time and simply does his job, act.

A special mention to Johny Lever who lights up any screen he walks into. He needs nothing, just his face.

I am hesitant to say that I Want to Talk tried to live up to the legacy that Piku left behind. Hesitant because it is a completely different film. Saying it nonetheless because it had all the same markings. The father-daughter duo, the life-altering illness, the humour, the honesty and let’s not forget, the theme track which sounded hauntingly similar to the Piku sarod theme that everyone is madly in love with. However, it still is a film with a gentleness that only Shoojit Sircar can bring onto screen. And for that, I will give it a chance.