Raat Akeli Hai Analysis

Raat Akeli Hai

Directed by: Honey Trehan
Written by: Smita Singh

Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte

I initially looked at this film as a murder mystery, but Rahul Desai's observation about this being a coming-of-age drama was so interesting. Nawazuddin's thoughts and instincts are informed from a sense of patriarchy in the beginning and his belief system is challenged at every point in the film later and this arc was subtle and he doesn't unrealistically become a feminist by the end of the film. We hardly see character arcs in detective films, Sherlock and a lot of such detective characters are usually flat arcs. We sometimes see a wound in the past which haunts them, which they have to address and overcome in order to solve the case - but rarely do we see character arcs, subtle or blatant. L. A. Confidential is a brilliant film which had a corruption arc. 

It's difficult to have character arcs for detective films because usually the conflict or the challenge should directly address the flaw and solving a case could probably address your fear, you could have a fear to bravery arc - but it doesn't seem real - a detective being fearful doesn't make much sense. In this film, the case addresses his flaw because he assumes certain things because of his flaw, that a woman couldn't have killed that man so brutally - his flaw or the lie that he believes, patriarchy, directly hinders his progress in the case and punishes him and makes him re-evaluate his understanding of the world.

That one scene where she is told that if she has any shame, she would've already been dead - he outrages her modesty and that is depicted by the sound of fireworks bursting in that moment. I like it when filmmakers try to use sounds and visuals in the scene to depict internal feelings and emotions of a character - I wonder why people don't do that. If this is overdone, it can get irritating too - but people hardly do it. 

However, while I was watching the film - it felt like I was watching a show, the treatment of the film. I don't know why Netflix makes all their films/shows look the same, at least in each genre. This film had a different color palette for the scenes in the mansion but apart from that, the exteriors look similar. The problem with that is, we don't differentiate between different worlds and different settings easily. All films and shows feel the same. It might be helpful for Netflix to build their brand that way, that it's all about Netflix but I'd want to see a filmmaker's world and not that of Netflix's.