R Balki’s Chup (Shut Up/The Revenge of the Artist) explores a need I’ve discussed for years: that the Indian film industry and film educational institutes create qualified filmmakers aiming to make good films, ie the supply side, but hardly any institute regularly creates qualified critics and curators, to address the demand side to appreciate good films. R Balki weaves a thriller demanding accountability from film critics; from those who hold filmmakers accountable. It’s a cri de coeur, a plea to critics to take films seriously—and if you can’t, then shut up, or else… Indian culture has an ancient precedent for this demand: Bharata Muni’s Natya Shastra, the classical treatise on dramatic arts, believed to be written between the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE, also included qualifications of judges and audience, along with the artists. And Abhinavagupta, the Kashmiri aesthetician and philosopher who lived in the 10th-11th century AD, wrote of the audience, the rasika, being a sahridaya, knowledgeable and empathetic, with an openness of heart to embrace art. 

In Chup, there’s a serial killer on the loose and his victims are film critics who gave bad reviews of films! He kills them by taking cues from their reviews, and carving bloody star ratings on their foreheads. It’s an original conceit, and probably the vicarious wish fulfillment of filmmakers worldwide, who feel critics didn’t appreciate their art enough—or were paid. It questions the credentials and ethics of critics who callously pass judgment. It also reminds me of Srijit Mukherji’s Baishe Srabon (Bengali), in which a serial killer kills on the death anniversaries of famous Bengali poets, leaving behind fragments of their poetry next to the body—again, a terrifying plea for better appreciation of their poetry.