Digital Review: ‘Unpaused: Naya Safar’ (Amazon Prime)
‘Unpaused’ was an optimistic reminiscence of the pandemic, when we hoped to emerge better, stronger, more connected. But ‘Unpaused: Naya Safar’ takes a different approach. We’ve all seen too much, become too jaded to believe that all we need is each other to get through the hardest years of our lives.
In the five episodes directed by Nupur Asthana, Ayappa KM, Ruchir Arun, Shikha Makan, and Nagraj Manjule, the antagonists have changed. We aren’t battling fear and loneliness anymore. Now, we are faced with the isolation of capitalism, class divide, and power dynamics. And battling these, according to the film makers, is futile. All we can do is ignore and live, despite the crushing weight of this calamity.
Nupur Asthana’s ‘The Couple’, starring Shreya Dhanwanthary as Akriti and Priyanshu Painyuli as Dippy, is the first episode in the series. Akriti unceremoniously loses her job right as she was about to launch a passion project, causing her to confront the value society sees in her as an employee, as a woman, and as a partner. Dhanwanthary and Painyuli share great chemistry, and when paired with great dialogue, there is no stopping them.
Episode 4 – ‘Gond Ke Laddu’ by Shikha Makan also tells a story about a young couple struggling against capitalism. Susheela (Neena Kulkarni) hires a courier service to send laddus to her daughter. The package gets into an accident. This could cost delivery worker Rohan (Lakshvir Singh Saran) his job, so him and his wife Geetha (Darshana Rajendran) commit to fixing this. ‘Gond Ke Laddu’ is the most light-hearted film in the bunch, especially due to Neena Kulkarni.
In Ruchir Arun’s ‘Teen Tigada’ (Episode 3), Chandan (Saqib Saleem), Dimple (Ashish Verma) and Ajeet (Sam Mohan) get stranded at the abandoned factory they were assigned to deliver a truck full of stolen loot. The trio of thieves eventually manage to rise above this nightmare lockdown scenario, but not without trampling each others’ nerves. ‘Teen Tigada’ feels little longer than it needed to be, but has some truly enjoyable moments.
Nagraj Manjule’s ‘Vaikunth’ (Episode 5) starts off as grim. Vikas (Manjule) is seen working at a crematorium at the peak of the Delta wave. Every day he methodically builds and burns pyres, does mass cremations, all while taking care of his son and worrying about his COVID-positive father. It’s haunting, but it is also finds moments of absurd hilarity. The monotony of tragedy in Vikas’ life is front and center here, but Manjule is too much of an optimist to deprive us of a happy ending.
Ayappa KM, however, isn’t. In ‘War Room’ (Episode 2), perhaps the strongest episode of the series, he fearlessly confronts the morality of life and death in a COVID crisis center. The film explores a brief second where the powerless Sangeeta (Geetanjali Kulkarni) has leverage over her tormentor. Is it her moral obligation to provide a life-saving hospital bed to the man who destroyed what mattered to her most? Or is this fated revenge? The tense atmosphere of the film against the stillness of Kulkarni’s performance, allows ‘War Room’ to say so much with seemingly no effort at all. In both ‘Vaikunth’ and ‘War Room’ we keep asking people to do heroic feats while we can’t even offer them the basic dignity of having a roof over their heads or a pen in their hands.
‘Unpaused: Naya Safar’, for the most part, is not a fun watch. There’s a sense of fatigue and hopelessness to the short films. But these stories capture an important moment in history, one we should highlight and learn from. Hopefully in a few years, these stories will remind us of how much we have grown.
