"Shreelancer" (2017) Movie Review

By Vani P Nair -

 

                   Shreelancer: The Journey of a Stoic Freelancer



Director: Sandeep Mohan

Release Date: 18 August 2017 (India)

 

The indie filmmaker Sandeep Mohan has crafted a visual narrative sans the polish and glitter of a commercial feature film in Shreelancer. The movie is as much about Shree’s search for his own comfortable space as it is about him getting pushed out into the boundless world where he is forced to look life in the eye in all its bitter glory. The dispiriting contrast between Shree’s aspirations and reality becomes apparent in the very first scene, in the cafĂ©, where after taking a few deep breathes, he plugs himself into the right mental zone aided by mood music and a steaming cup of coffee, only to be shown writing an add for a cheap Thai foot massage parlor.

Lack of validation from his father, who would rather he take up a nine to five job, coupled with financial instability, stops him from accepting his calling as an artist with conviction. The movie doesn’t excite you at any point. Instead, Shree’s ennui and the drudgery of meaningless routine begins to get to you. This seems to be designful from the director, who is intent to get his viewers to experience the central character’s emotional arc first hand. The settings, neither the city nor the hills, are ever employed to garnish the visual servings on the celluloid.

It becomes apparent that Shree, who is in his late twenties, has not had enough “real-life” experiences being confined to Bangalore for the better part of his existence. His days are spent in different cafes for want of a congenial environment to sit and write in peace. The world as Shree knows it has undergone the distortion of digital space before it reaches him. In course of time, he does become aware of this deficit in his life. A timely invitation to a friend’s marriage at Chandigarh sets stage for an adventure and likely possibilities.

Though the unwelcome experiences during the visit do manage to fill him with some much-required insights, at no point of time is he shown to be having a moment of epiphany. Sandeep has steered clear of anything that might come across as remotely dramatic and instead relies on the compounding effect of disparate events to portray the character’s transition. Arjun Radhakrishnan has, in keeping with the director’s intent, portrayed the introverted, timid yet resilient Shree with remarkable agility. Though Shree can come across as one of those fancy free and footloose youngsters in search of purpose in life, he is not trying to escape his reality as much as attempting to stabilize it. The fact that the movie ends with him creating a shared space for like-minded individuals like himself to sit in comfortable silence and work in itself is indicative of Shree’s desire for a personalized space. 

As mentioned in the beginning, the story has an undercurrent of spatial dynamics. The hero is not in search of a better or different space. He is, in fact, deliberating means to make his own space more open and inclusive so as to escape any feeling of confinement, claustrophobia or loneliness. Shree’s misadventures introduce him to a different dimension of his self, which he willingly embraces at the end of the film.  

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