Branthan Review

Branthan is a 2021 short film written and directed by Dhanil K Suresh.

Harboring some interesting ideas and a bit of meta commentary in the filmmaking space, Branthan has some unique flashes, but ultimately something that is a bit alienating in the final product.

This is a film that feels deeply personal and closely connected to Suresh as a writer/director. It is in that style though that leaves the final product alienating in execution. It feels too personal, so much so that is hard to pull a connection to our main character throughout.

The one saving grace for the film has to be the visual flair that it carries during the entire runtime. With some interesting transitions and good jumps from color to black and white cinematography. Although in some of the black and white scenes things are muddied by unevenly lit moments.

The story is one of dreams and navigating through a mind that carries with it some interesting troubles. The weaving in and out from each of these vignettes is nice and keeps the film from being bogged down too much from narrative introspection.

Everything was clearly made with a DIY style budget and the fidelity of the images is akin to something like a smartphone or standard DSLR camera, which the mileage varies for throughout. At times it looks great, but at others the lack of a higher camera can really bring things down a bit.

In a beat that is usually not mentioned here but was too easy not to bring up was actually the poster for the film which looks fantastic. It actually set the bar if anything too high going into the viewing of the film. Was not really personally what one might expect and the quality in the final piece just doesn’t match up.

Overall Branthan is an interesting watch for those craving some deep philosophical musings in a short film but not much else. The personalized storytelling one would assume made for a nice cathartic muse for Suresh but it leaves the audience a bit too far removed from getting into the plight of our main character.

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Cheers!

Daniel Hess

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