I.D. A Movie by Kamal K.M

By vinodnarayan on August 18, 2016 • ( 0 )

I.D is a movie I watched on Netflix. Recently over the past few months I have seen a surge of Independent Hindi Movies appearing on Netflix. This was one among them. It is so amazing to see such engrossing movies made in India and for people like me sitting in US can watch them. Thanks to Netflix for that.

The movie I.D. directed by Kamal K.M. is the story of a person’s search for the identity of another person. When a painter who comes to paint in a flat in Mumbai collapses and dies, the house Owner Charu played by Geetanjali Thapa could not leave it there. While everyone including the police tells her to forget about it her conscious does not allow her to leave the proceedings just as an unidentified body. The movie is about her journey to find who the painter is.

The movie is significant because in India there is a large moving labor population who come from small villages to big cities like Mumbai and Delhi and start working. Often they do not know many people in the city and live by getting work through several agents who operate supplying workers to contractors. No one knows if there family lives there or they are alone, where they live and so on. They just remain as a painter, plumber, laborer and so on for the day they work. Is there a family behind them? Are kids waiting for them to return? and what about the others who rely on them? these are questions no one asks in a 8 to 10 hour acquaintance with them. Until something like I.D. happens and someone like Charu feels otherwise.

The movie throws light on that connection we all have as human beings, the uncomfortable feeling that builds when someone does not have an I.D. We all have heard stories of people who have lost their life and declared unidentified after the initial search. Geetanjali gives a beautiful performance as Charu and she easily moves from being an indifferent house owner when the painter comes to work to being completely involved in the search as the only one person who seems to be connected with him or his dead body.

I.D. leaves with you a sense of loss, the pain of not being able to identify, a deepening wound of facelessness.