'Safed' movie review: Meera Chopra and Sandeep Singh's film fails to do justice to its unusual plot

Cast: Abahy Verma, Meera Chopra, Barkha Bisht Sengupta and Chhaya Kadam

Director: Sandeep Singh

Language: Hindi

Safed marks producer Sandeep Singh’s debut as a director, and also as a philosopher. The film has a quote that says that the society we are growing up in is not growing up. Actually, the other truth here is that the cinema we are growing up in is also not exactly growing up. The cinema of 2023 is content with delivering sermons and messages to get away with the mediocrity of filmmaking. And Sandeep Singh’s Safed is one such film.

It’s about an unusual love story between a queer and a widow. Every time a film and its creators use adjectives like explosive or unusual, beware! The makers here are so enamored by their own creation, they fail to add any depth or nuance to this supposed ‘unusual’ love story. The parts written for all the actors, including the dependable and reliable Jameel Khan, are complexed, but performed with more pretentiousness than precision.

There’s a reference of Lord Shiva, and its incompleteness, and how the nation worships him. It’s all about essaying the idea of inclusivity and equality, both for the queers and the widows. There’s a dark shot of a group of widowed women breaking their bangles in slow-motion. The makers could defend the datedness of the scene by saying this still continues to be the reality of India. Point taken. The datedness isn’t in the scene but the way it has been shot and performed.

It’s that rare film where even the quietness screams of ham. The visuals fail to lift the restrained (read restless) narrative and the dialogues do nothing for any of the community the film so proudly represents. There’s another ironic subtext to the film, how it’s titled Safed and yet the lives of all the characters loom in darkness, and even darker is the way it’s shot. Was this intentional? At least this should be a question they should be able to answer since they have done absolutely nothing for the subject they proudly presented as ‘unusual’.

Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars)

Safed is now streaming on Zee5