UNSPARING MIRRORS OF QUOTIDIAN LIVES

CINEMA is a medium made for spectacular, extraordinary and even grotesque narratives.

- MANOJ KUMAR JHA

In contrast, what is striking about Perfect Family, a web series produced by Pankaj Tripathi, and Anusha Rizvi's film The Great Shamsuddin Family is that they turn their gaze towards a realm often neglected in cinema-the uncelebrated ordinariness of everyday lives, marked by pain, endurance and muted anguish.

In foregrounding this ordinariness, the two works compel us to train our attention to images we tend to glaze over. In depicting conflict and suffering without theatrical escalation, these works unsettle us with issues we are deeply familiar with. These narratives mirror a social reality we do not always acknowledge, making us realise beautifully how the ordinary, when honestly rendered, can be profoundly disturbing.

Perfect Family exemplifies this aesthetic choice. Whatever Tripathi's characters lack in overt theatrical intensity, he allows them to compensate for by showing the rhythms of a life shaped by small accommodations, unspoken con-testations and daily negotiations. Witnessing the emotional economy of a family that appears functional, even content, one realises that the missed conversations, deferred desires, fragile compromises have quietly fractured it. The revelations in the series were not dramatic, yet the 'perfection' of the family is exposed as a social performance sustained through denial. We often mistake endurance for genuine harmony.

Anusha Rizvi's