Gandhi Talks review: A visual delight that delivers a much-needed conversation without words!

Kishor Pandurang Belekar's Gandhi Talks is a bold silent musical that is brave enough to place its commentary to read in between the lines and trust its cast to anchor it ahead!

Words are sold in wholesale these days. Everywhere you turn, words are thrown at you - on television, in advertisements, in the news, across social media, in traffic, even in films. Reduced to low vocabulary, molded or repackaged to be echoed by politicians, newsrooms or marketing soundbites. They are everywhere, screamed until they resemble something sounding like truth, yet spoken without responsibility or reflection. In a world so overburdened by language, silence begins to feel radical. And hence a silent film that chooses to set words aside and still speak its truth feels not just like an escape from the noise, but a necessity. A reminder that meaning doesn’t always need volume and that sometimes, silence can say what words no longer can. That is something Gandhi Talks understands deeply! 

Taking a chapter from old-school cinema, the film drops us into a familiar dramatic setup where two stories run largely parallel to each other. Both revolve around sons emotionally attached to their mothers, shaped by loss, and confronted by moral conflicts that threaten to turn their worlds upside down. In one thread, Vijay Sethupathi plays a struggling man living in a chawl, caring for his bedridden mother. Broke but principled, he hustles endlessly for a job, dreaming of a life where he can build a house filled with comforts and, more importantly, marry Aditi Rao Hydari, who lives right across from him. His pockets are empty, but his conduct remains upright, until circumstances push him to a breaking point. Running parallel is the story of Arvind Swamy, a billionaire industrialist whose construction project is caught in a legal battle. He has every imaginable luxury at his disposal, yet lives in emotional isolation as he has already lost his family and eventually loses his mother, his only anchor, along with the project dedicated in her name, leaving him bereft of both family and legacy.

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The entire first half is dedicated to building these backstories through a visually aesthetic lens, where Kanan B. Rawat’s cinematography and Ashish Mhatre’s editing move in rhythmic conversation with each other. As one frame swiftly cuts into another, the film begins to speak through metaphors turning mundane life into a canvas for aesthetics, where meaning and poetry emerge from movement rather than words. And if you think the film’s bold decision to have no dialogue might risk losing your attention, that fear is unfounded. If anything, the film demands your complete presence, urging you not to miss a single beat of what unfolds on screen. In doing so, it quietly challenges the growing reliance on exposition-heavy storytelling designed for second-screen consumption.

A huge part of this engagement comes from A.R. Rahman’s score, which effectively becomes the film’s language. Each character is associated with a distinct musical motif, and every situation carries its own emotional texture, whether comic or deeply moving. The music does the emotional heavy lifting with remarkable precision while the cast goes to prove that choosing the right actors for the right characters matters. Arvind Swamy brings a heartbreaking innocence to a billionaire who finds himself on a quiet path of revenge, determined to reclaim everything he has lost. Aditi Rao Hydari adds depth and nuance to a character that could have easily been reduced to a mere love interest. Siddharth Jadhav, largely known for his comedy, finally finds a role that fits him just right, one that plays to his impeccable comic timing without turning him into a caricature. And anchoring the film is Vijay Sethupathi, who infuses his character with an everyday charm of someone who can break into a dance or crack a joke as easily as he can be weighed down by the pile of struggles surrounding him. It is only Sethupathi who can bring in the lived-in emotional weight of the contradiction of hunger and humor of having gone days without food and yet gulping it down in the middle of a robbery.

And just when you think you’ve settled into the film’s rhythm, the second half still finds ways to surprise you. Largely set within a sprawling mansion-like house, it unfolds as a constant game of hide-and-seek between the three central characters. It feels as though the film is challenging itself yet again, pushing its own boundaries and emerges even stronger for it. The result is the most engaging stretch of the narrative, one that makes you laugh, cry, gasp, and stay on edge till the very end.

But more than anything else, Kishor Pandurang Belekar’s silent film makes its bravest choice in leaving us with “Be the change you want to see in the world”. A few words once spoken by Gandhi, the father of a nation that has reduced him to just a picture on currency, they resonate louder than ever. As Arijit Singh’s voice glides over A.R. Rahman’s composition, a moment where Gandhi’s image is swept toward a drain and saved by a common man, lingers. It feels as though the film is whispering a truth the world has forgotten about - while voices around us grow louder, flinging words they barely understand, all of it dissolves into mere noise. Real truth, instead, lives in silence, in the quiet courage of living honestly, even when that honesty dares to stand against a world that only applauds the loud.

Gandhi Talks is currently running in theatres near you!

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