First Take | Barah x Barah, Eeb Allay Ooo, and Mail
First Take | Barah x Barah, Eeb Allay Ooo, and Mail: Three sidelined masterpieces on living life on the fringes In an era when soggy sagas stretch themselves lazily into 10 episodes of 10 hours for no reason except an extravagant budget, it feels good to see filmmakers counting their pennies. Corruption comes with affluence. There is something to be said about conscientious filmmakers with tight budgets. They understand the need for the economy as well as their characters do. This is why when conscientious filmmakers are given unlimited budgets to shoot they go haywire: Shyam Benegal in Zubeida, Govind Nihalani in Dev, and Ketan Mehta in Mangal Pandey: The Rising are prime examples of this murder-by-excess syndrome. This is why I wish Gaurav Madan, Prateek Vats, and Uday Gurrala the directors of Barah x Barah, Eeb Allay Ooo, and Mail never get more money than the shoestring budget given to their maiden feature films. Gaurav Madan’s Barah x Barah is a moving gently nudging saga of ...