There is a long history of small-budget films that escaped the limitations of finance and showed the world what true innovation really is. Generations of filmmakers have relied on techniques indistinguishable from magic tricks to make up for budgetary constraints. Scores of these movies are now regarded as classics. Dial 1975, which dropped on the OTT platform Waves this week, isn’t one of them. The film features a trio of talented actors and traps them in a production so amateurish that it could be mistaken for a student project.
The starting premise is familiar. It’s the Emergency (of the ‘70s) and civil rights have been greatly restricted by the administration of a prime minister, who, however, is never seen or heard in the film. It is up to the prime minister’s loyal aides to ensure that even the mere thought of rebellion is quelled before it can morph into something more damaging.
Word spreads about a German and the futuristic piece of technology that he’s bringing to India; it’s a piece of technology that can change the world, but more concerningly for the PM, it can provide her enemies with the means necessary to evade her watchful eye. Inside the German’s briefcase is a handheld communication device; a mix between a radio and a walkie-talkie. None of the characters in Dial 1975 know this, but the object of their fascination is an early mobile phone.
Because the government doesn’t know what a mobile phone is, it doesn’t have the necessary means to counter it. In the hands of rebels, it could be devastating to the authoritarian regime. And so, the prime minister tasks her most loyal lieutenant to stage a Watergate-style robbery and steal a tape pertaining to this device. The lieutenant recruits a prison inmate played by Pravessh Rana to carry out the robbery with the promise of a clean slate. In the thief’s way, however, is a bitter former soldier played by Kay Kay Menon, and a femme fatale played by Kirti Kulhari.
Difficult to keep up with plot
Now for the real surprise. The PM’s lieutenant is an “Angrez jailer” played by none other than Tom Alter, a legendary performer who has been dead for nearly a decade. Did directors Navneet Behal and Vibhu Kashyap resurrect the icon with artificial intelligence? No. As the actor’s son has now revealed on social media, this was the last film Alter shot before his death. The film is seeing a delayed release.
Even now, it appears that Dial 1975 has been released in an incomplete state; not (only) because it’s lacking in every creative sense, but because it appears to be missing entire chunks of story. It plays like a two-hour highlights reel where scenes start and end abruptly, without any connective tissue. It’s like watching a particularly impatient teen flip through channels on the television before anyone can clock what’s happening.
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In one moment, Menon’s anti-hero character is murdering someone with a sugarcane to the neck. And in another, Rana and Kulhari’s characters are having a meet-cute at a ‘mithai’ shop. No one seems to know what’s happening, nor do the filmmakers show any interest in getting all the actors on the same page. Are Rana and Kulhari’s characters supposed to be falling in love? That’s certainly what the movie implies, but it’s most definitely not what their negative chemistry suggests.
Menon clearly isn’t taking any direction at all; in one scene, he delivers the most unconvincing laugh, feels a stitch in his side and instantly begins howling like a wolf.
And then there’s the German man who speaks only when the camera is facing away from him, because he’s obviously not German, and is instead a local who remains unidentified even in the end credits.
It’s unfortunate that the movie was released in this state, because nobody deserves it. But on the other hand, was anyone really begging to watch Dial 1975?