Gandhi Talks Movie Review:

In this accursed world, money alone talks while everyone is rendered mute, this is the cold inevitable truth examined by Gandhi Talks. A silent film in 2026 might be considered a pointless exercise, a vanity project, a pretentious slog. But if any film deserves to be told in the silent form, it is Gandhi Talks. The several, loaded ironies of this silent film are unmissable. Gripped by the unforgiving clutches of money, this is a world where, if you do not provide monetary value to the society, you cannot talk to the love of your life even if you both live across from each other, you cannot land a job unless you are willing to participate in the underground bureaucracy of corruption, and even if you do have all the money in the world, you will be brought to your knees if you do not abide by those who control the never-ending, ever-expanding cycle of power-money-corruption: the politicians.

Director: Kishor Pandurang Belekar

Cast: Vijay Sethupathi, Arvind Swamy, Aditi Rao Hydari, Siddharth Jadhav

The film begins with a man spitting on the road; the spittle falls on a vendor’s basket of fish, who promptly walks up the flight of stairs, and the spitter watches in horror as the wife picks up fish from the same basket. Whatever goes around comes around. Karma.

Gandhi Talks is replete with such short bursts of moral didacticism. It starts off with charming simplicity, poetic indulgence in its silent format, but what you ultimately remember is its overwhelming lack of subtlety. The most exciting part of a silent film in the modern era is its self-imposed restraint. As they say, the more restrictions you have, the more creative you become. As the story unfolds, along with the meditative calmness of the film’s format, we are also excited to see how the film will surpass the absence of dialogue. Gandhi Talks leverages its inherently exciting aspect with mixed results. The quiet glances between the lovers, brimming with affection; a look of muted rage at having failed to provide for family; the sombre thousand-yard stare of a man trying to lose himself in alcohol; and that total surrender to basal urges when the thief robbing a rich man’s house stops in his tracks at the sight of the fridge and indulges himself in food. These intimate human moments are elevated by the absence of dialogue. One of the best examples of this is the scene where Vijay Sethupathi’s Mahadev, desperate for money, takes up the gig of a living statue (of Lord Krishna) at a wedding function. Children throw food at his face and run away, and yet, Mahadev does not break character. He remains still, fighting back tears until Arvind Swamy’s Boseman steps in to wipe his face as the crowd applauds. The haunting implication is that if you are poor, your dignity will be stripped away, and the only way to hold some of it back is through silent acceptance. These are the moments the film excels in. However, there are other scenes where Gandhi Talks struggles with its impatience to communicate. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, but what if the picture is just a wall of text? Instead of finding creative ways, the film resorts to text messages, corny newspaper headlines, hoardings with slogans, and written notes to convey what it wants, thereby letting go of the very thing that makes it special. These are forgivable until the moment when Vijay Sethupathi’s Mahadev writes out a flowchart to his girlfriend (Aditi Rao Hydari) explaining why he is finally resorting to robbery.

AR Rahman tries everything he can to make the silence palatable, but the irony is how the biggest appeal of the film happens to be its silence, and so, the music, more often than not, ends up being an unsolicited helper. Rahman is brilliant as ever, and we do appreciate the effort, but did we really need him to be such an overwhelming presence? Gandhi Talks is a painting, but half the canvas is a written instruction on how to read the painting. As for its messages, the film is also an unintentional reminder of that one burning question that underlines the foundations of modern India. At a time when forces beyond our comprehension fight with each other to define what it means to be Indian, do the values of the man whose face is on our currency, still matter? Is the fight against corruption relevant at a time of communal unrest? Will it always fall upon the poor to take the noblest path while the rich walk away with a bag of gold? These are the unintended questions the film leaves us with, and it also leaves us with a prolonged silence. But a silence is also a moment of reflection that precedes an answer, or silence by itself might be an answer.