Bombay Mirror: From secular to communal in three minutes

This is another short film by an Indian filmmaker Shlok Sharma and is as horrifying as it’s title. The film from the starting, establishes the relationship between a barber and his regular client who exchange pleasantries of their locality and daily life struggles with each other over their frequent few minute interactions. The director makes the religion of the two protagonists known by stereotyping the name and behavior associated with a religion. They both seem to be friends until a communal riot builds up in the background, outside the shop, which seemingly provokes the barber to take matters in his own hands. The director creates a nerve-wrenching moment, making the audience gasp in disbelief for what is about to come next, as the barber slits open the throat of a innocent defenseless man on an assumption of him becoming a threat to his community. The hard-hitting twist in the end of the riots, turning out to be an act/set up for a film ridicules the notion of complying with an act of violence for the sake of upholding a set of ideas.

The movie questions the unpredictability, the sudden change in the thinking of a human mind and the blind faith with which we are willing to follow a group just because they are in power.  It breaks through the fraudulent layer of secularism, hitting on the hollow and callous nature of communalism.

It makes you want to investigate into the practice of stereotyping behavior and the constant false vindication of one’s belief protecting it from any change.