Normally, one of the most frustrating things that a movie can do is to abandon its characters and become too consumed by the plot. Our mainstream cinema has always struggled with this, and things have only become worse in the streaming era. It is said that show runners, in particular, can get away with anything on digital platforms as long as there is a murder in the first episode. Well, someone most certainly dies at the end of the first act in CTRL, the new film from Vikramaditya Motwane — his first feature since AK vs AK in 2020.
And as with that film, the characters in CTRL are so uninteresting that you’re willing to forgive it for diving headfirst into an elaborate (and often harebrained) plot. But as it progresses, CTRL grows more and more distant from its protagonist, which is odd, considering what kind of movie it is. Executive produced by Timur Bekmambetov, a man who can now claim association with both Angelina Jolie and Aparshakti Khurana, CTRL is a ‘screenlife’ thriller — a movie that unfolds entirely via the black mirrors of our gadgets. In the past, the technique has been used by filmmakers like Bekmambetov himself to make astute observations about modern culture, but through engaging character-focused narratives. In CTRL, Motwane prioritises the cultural commentary over everything else. In the film’s second act, he deletes all pretense of drama, and adopts a paranoid thriller tone instead.
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Ananya Panday as Nella, Vihaan Samat as Joe in CTRL.
Ananya Panday is dependably good in the central role of Nella Awasthi, an ambitious social media influencer living her dream life in Mumbai. The young actor can hold a close-up better than most of her contemporaries, and then some. Nella comes from a middle-class home in Delhi, and in her past life, used to be called Nalini. She joined hands with her boyfriend Joe (Vihaan Samat, from Eternally Confused and Eager for Love), and together, they began creating comedy sketches online. CTRL doesn’t exactly pass judgement on the quality of Nella and Joe’s content, and although this might seem irrelevant to the larger picture, it’s emblematic of some of the film’s bigger flaws. Because it doesn’t seem too interested in exploring who Nella and Joe are as people, it resorts to a comic book-inspired narrative that sends Nella down a conspiratorial rabbit hole.
It is revealed that Joe was a part of a secret society of sorts, dedicated to exposing the crimes of a Meta-esque conglomerate called Mantra. But Joe’s investigation, which he was doing on the down-low, is derailed by the revelation of another secret. We discover that Joe wasn’t only keeping the revolutionary inside him hidden from Nella; he was also hiding his inner adulterer. The plot kicks into motion only because she catches him red-handed at a Smoke House Deli or something, making out with another girl after one of his secret society meetings. It’s a contrivance that is frankly beneath a storyteller of Motwane’s calibre.
After they break up, Nella inherits not only the baggage of a five-year relationship, but also of Joe’s discoveries about Mantra. When Joe goes missing, it is up to her to complete his crusade. For the movie to proceed beyond this point, it requires Nella to be uncommonly stupid. Even if she wasn’t a perpetually online person with no option but to be abreast of all the latest algorithmic updates, some of things that CTRL makes her do are quite inconceivable. Not only does Nella speak like a character out of a Salim-Javed movie — the disappointing dialogues force her to use words like chedna, pachtana, manhoos, balki, chhaanbeen, vishwas — she also behaves like someone who has no idea how the internet works.
But it is in the second act that the movie puts you in a chokehold of fascination and frustration. You’ll want to scratch your hair out at the carelessness that Nella shows, even after she has had a taste of Joe’s discoveries. She practically signs away her life to Mantra, after being lulled into submission by an AI assistant that looks an awful lot like Ranveer Singh from Lootera. She gives the AI, whom she names Allen, access to all corners of her digital existence. This is sort of understandable, considering that the movie is presenting an exaggerated reality, and that we’re all already doing this to a degree. But the one thing that stretches the limits of believability beyond an acceptable threshold is Nella’s carefree attitude about keeping her camera on at all times for Allen. She even allows ‘him’ to peep at her while she sleeps. Aren’t most women careful about this already?
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CTRL is perhaps most effective in the tiny moments where it taps into our crippling digital dependency. It does a better job at this than even Panday’s last film, the thematically similar Kho Gaye Hum Kahan. The terror that she feels after being locked out of her accounts by Allen is palpable, as is the frenzy with which she attempts to regain access to them. This is the sort of thing that can evoke life-or-death anxiety in the generation that has grown up, android-like, with a phone attached to their hands. In Nella’s case, lives are actually at stake. But was she ever an activist? The movie never said so; in fact, even by the generally timid standards of social media influencers, her content showed no signs of savagery.
Ananya Panday as Nella in CTRL.
For the longest time, the biggest compliment that you can give CTRL is that at least it isn’t LSD 2. But Motwane decisively distances himself once and for all from Dibakar Banerjee’s train wreck of a film when he shifts gears once again in the third act. He ditches the ‘screenlife’ aesthetic for something less alienating, something more melancholic, more Motwane-esque. This is the film’s strongest stretch. Behavioural patterns that felt irrational earlier take a more sombre relevance. Panday’s performance gets even better. The pace becomes less frenetic. Nella is allowed moments to breathe, even as life takes her by the throat. She is given the opportunity to make considered choices, instead of being thrust into situations that force her to flail about helplessly.
In its final moments, CTRL taps into Nella’s insecurities, her vulnerability, her inherent loneliness. You wish that the entire film had been this focused. Motwane has always shown a deep talent for transplanting core human emotions into richly stylised cinematic worlds. CTRL is a bold swing for the fences, but it is also overcooked; it buries a fine central performance under a noisy narrative, and like its protagonist, makes the rash decision to erase its only connection to a beating heart.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
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Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
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