Shor Se Shuruaat movie review: Of sound and silence

Shor Se Shuruaat has one theme which binds them: sound and silence. It is about being able to hear and choosing to mute the noise. About not being able to sleep and finding solace in CDs which have become extinct in an authoritarian future; a man condemned to death whose last wish is to hear, just hear; about a fearless poet who chooses to break his silence and suffer the consequences, about whimsical dreamscapes, about a distressed young woman finding refuge in music.

As compared to several other similar series of compiled shorts I’ve seen, ‘Shor Se Shuruaat’ fares better. The thematic thread running through the films gives us a useful connector. And there’s a certain quality to the production in almost all the films.

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But despite the potential, the stark fact is that Shor Se Shuruaat doesn’t have consistency: only two or three films stand out; the rest are either strictly serviceable or plain amateurish.

The one I liked the most has Atul Kulkarni play a humanist poet-columnist who uses his voice to call out injustice. Kulkarni brings weight to the part, and the filmmaker manages to give us characters who feel lived in. Also nice is the one about a little boy who chooses calm over noise: when he smiles, his face lights up.

In the better films, you can see the difference between construction and creation.