Movie Review on the Short Film Bypass

Bypass as we all know is a go between two routes, a short cut. We see the shortcut to earning money in the film. The movie is a region based film made by a student. The story line of the film is very basic it talks about the livelihood of the people living in that region.

The film begins with a married couple going on a drive in a region in Rajasthan and instead of going on the highway they take a bypass that goes through a rural region. The film has parallel stories going on at the same time. Along with the married couple they show a pair of bandits, who want to loot any couple that travel on the bypass. That is what they do to the couple we see in the beginning. The couple is looted and left to die in the desert. The man's hand is chopped off because of a gold watch and one of the bandits has an obsession of cutting women's throats and we see that in the particular scene. In the midst we get introduced to a police man of that region who is as corrupt as any of the thieves. The livelihood of all the people in the surrounding areas is exposed to us through this movie; the interdependency of the people of that region is showed, the fact that they are used to doing work with either hook or by crook. They even show the plight of women, some who are treated horribly and the other who treats people horribly. Hence we see that each character has a dual role as well as different emotional level depending on the circumstance. Hence we see the importance of each of the characters in the film.
The film is made with a small budget because the actors seem to be locals and there is no script and no dialogue. There are just actions and varying music depending on the scene and shots in the film. There is a lot of use of symbolism, the cutting of the hand equated to cutting of the meat, the tree in the desert, the barren and the loneliness of the desert and the watches, which symbolizes prosperity.

The timeline of the film seems to be taking place in the day time as we