A STRANGELY HOLLOW GAME

INTERIORITY. It's a character's private world, their unspoken thoughts, the bulk of what makes their personality, what gives them life. When there is interiority, you begin to understand a character-truly.

- SUDHIR SRINIVASAN

Their thoughts, their motivations; you begin to get them in theory first, but slowly, you begin to sync with them. This isn't necessarily about attachment it's about emotional union, even with those whose decisions you might never make or agree with. I fear Test, for all its ambition, for all its commentary on obsession, for all its felt performances, still struggles to generate this crucial interiority 2 Perhaps that's why Arjun, a fading su perstar cricketer played by Siddharth, feels so unchanged, so incomprehensibly still-despite the storm around him. There's a moment where he does something unthinkable, something deeply against his grain, and yet, the moment drifts past us.

We don't sit with his internal struggle, we don't feel the weight of it. We don't quite see him shake under it. And there's often too much left to the imagination, I think. Like that moment when Meera Jasmine's Padma rains several slaps on Arjun. We can fill in the blanks.

Yes, it must suck to be practically a single parent. Yes, it must suck to deal with this impassive man. But as the scene unfolds with all its movement, with Padma collapsing in near-exhaustion-I found myself strangely unmoved.