Zinda begins with Sanju Baba awakes as prisoner in a locked windowless motel room, with no recollection of how he got there and no possibility of escape.
His never-speaking captor forces food into his room through a slot in the door. Periodically, valium gas is pumped into the room, and while he is unconscious, he is shaved, washed and dressed.
This goes on for....14 years, during which he learns from the television (his
sole luxury) that he has been accused in absentia of murdering his wife. But, cruelly, it’s not to be, for the valium mists come again and ......
well, that’s when it begins to get interesting. Because we’re only 10-15 minutes into the movie.The film then follows sanju in his quest for vengeance against his mystery captor, as he slowly unlocks the secret of why he was abducted, by whom, and - perhaps more importantly - why he was released, culminating in a finale that literally blew my head off.
The story of Zinda is told in a fast forward sequential manner supporting our Sanju with quick flashy impulses of historical events and background information. The seclusion from society makes him even more remotely dissident than the average suicidal demon materializing its ugly head inside the cursed minds of the youth and hostile.
Sanju’s advantage if you want to call it that is the separation from the public eye - out of sight and out of mind. But what could have been an interesting studying of one mans inability to enter a world he was vanquished from sadly wasn’t. Instead of focusing on Sanju’s disparities and the humanity around him the majority of the film is spent with Sanju searching for an answer to his imprisonment.
It’s in this motivation that the assembly of the mystery begins and the true meaning behind it all starts to unravel, but the fault lies in the director taking our main character from a point of loneliness and throwing him into a world in which he seemingly never forgot.
The idea is that Sanju found comfort in the TV and as the years past he acquired new knowledge and an awareness of his surroundings. But the intriguing thing that beckons my curiosity is how simple it was for a man to enter back into a civilization without regret, hesitation, or a feeling of complete abandonment after spending 14 years away from it.
John has a complex role in which he himself could possibly never understandthough this is mentioned delicately in the film the result of his sisters death surely played a pivotal role in his mind frame.Worth your moment.