Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: 3.5/5
114 minutes
Director: Dipesh Jain

‘Gali Guleiyan’ translates to ‘In the Shadows’. In this sense, the film, for its major part retains a dusky, gloomy look, which is possibly the intention of its first-time feature director Dipesh Jain. Screened so far at almost ten Film Festivals worldwide, Gali Guleiyan features the talented Manoj Bajpayee as Khuddoos, who lives alone in the decrepit, decaying bylanes of Old Delhi, teeming with hazardous overhead dangling wires. Some of these are his handiwork, connected to surveillance cameras linked to monitor screens in his home – his only link with the outside world.

In an adjoining building, separated by a thick wall, lives Liaquat (Neeraj Kabi) with wife Saira (Shahana Goswami) and teenaged son Idu (Om Singh). The affection between mother and son is palpable, and is the reason behind Liaquat’s abhorrence towards Idu. The intercutting of frames between Khuddoos and Liaquat is the high spot in the otherwise grim goings-on in their lives.

Bajpayee wears a bedraggled, downcast and schizophrenic look throughout the film, as if emerging from a dungeon after serving a life sentence. But in a male dominated, dark, brooding and intense film, it’s Shahana Goswami who excels as a woman trying to mediate between husband and son. Both Bajpayee and Kabi are brilliant, as also Ranvir Shorey as Khuddoos’s benevolent friend and debutant Om Singh. ‘Inspired by true events’ claims the film. The ending, and intervening scenes, however, are left to the viewers’ interpretation.

Cinematography by Kai Miedendorp is noteworthy, and the minimal strains of background music by veteran music composer Dana Niu (Logan, Annabelle, The Mummy) is in vivid contrast to the loud scores in most Indian films.