Two
roads diverged in the desert, an unfortunate couple took the least travelled by
and that made all the difference. Written and directed by British film maker Amit
Kumar, The Bypass takes the audience in
the midst of a merciless environment where the notion of Humanity is ruthlessly
snapped.
The
film opens with a couple driving through the desert and swerving suddenly
towards a bypass route. On the roadside,
two brutal bandits hide behind the dunes waiting for their prey. The couple is brutally
slain and then looted by the bandits. A policeman (Irrfan Khan) on his
motorbike stops at the accident’s site. Ironically, he is not bothered by the
murder itself. He looks for left spoils and picks a golden watch. A series of murders revolving around the belongings
of the slaughtered couple follows.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s genuine performance and his pensive
looks are irresistibly expressive. The mute bandit played by Sundar Dan Detha
is puzzling and his “psychopath” side is shockingly convincing. Irrfan Khan, the
policeman delivers once again an implacable performance.
The
characters in The Bypass emulate the sternness
of the arid weather. Rape, theft and murder constitute the modus Vivendi in this side of India’s dry Rajasthan. The film dispenses
admirably with verbal language. The characters do not utter any intelligible sound
except for the grunts of the mute bandit and the screams of the raped woman.
The
dog-eat-dog pattern in the film is reminiscent of Hobbes’state of nature where
the social contract has not been signed yet. The course of events is
vengeance-driven. The murderer is slaughtered and the one who cuts the woman
throat is killed by another woman. In the midst of this mayhem, a spirit of
divine justice restores a state of homeostasis in the desert. Bypass is a raw
piece of art that reinvents the definition of cinematic authenticity.
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