I Want to Talk

An Indian film set in America. Arjun Sen works in advertising. Successful, fast-talking, and he knows how to sell. He is divorced. He has a daughter and their relationship is thin. One day he goes to a doctor. A routine check. The result is bad. The cancer is advanced and the doctor gives him a hundred days. From there the film is a story of treatment. Surgery, chemotherapy, a complication, a second surgery. The number grows. He goes through operation after operation and each time an organ, a part, a function goes. His eating changes. His speech changes. His body changes. A relationship forms with his doctor. He asks questions constantly and the doctor gets used to it. His daughter Reya grows up. At first she does not want her father; then she comes at weekends. The narrative does not build that relationship with big scenes. Conversations in a car, a school event, a meal. What the narrative is interested in is not illness but duration: its idea is that the hundred days he was given pass, and then another hundred, and then another. Arjun does not die. He lives for years, and that is the narrative's real subject. The title is a demand. He wants to talk; to the doctors, to his daughter, to everyone. The tone is dry. The narrative does not work with emotional music and builds no scene to make you cry. There is humour. Arjun mocks his own condition. The story is based on a real person. Abhishek Bachchan changed physically for the part and his performance carries the film. Shoojit Sircar directed. Abhishek Bachchan, Ahilya Bamroo, Pearle Dey and Jayant Kripalani are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet, undemonstrative drama. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the narrative is deliberately repetitive and the operations come one after another.