Incomes a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a feat few filmmakers have achieved. Certainly, most of the most acclaimed movies of all time have however didn’t impress not less than one licensed critic on the web site. Due to this fact, within the uncommon occasion {that a} movie does earn an ideal rating, it’s price exploring the way it managed to win over each critic on Rotten Tomatoes that noticed it. One such movie is Santosh (2024), a brand new thriller directed by Sandhya Suri. The movie, which facilities on a widowed lady who takes her late husband’s place on the native police power, is the U.Okay.’s submission for Finest Worldwide Characteristic on the upcoming Academy Awards. Up to now, all 39 critics on Rotten Tomatoes are just about unanimous of their reward of each the movie’s technical components and its uncompromising themes of sexism, police corruption, and caste discrimination in India.
‘Santosh’ Is a Gritty and Bleak Police Drama
Santosh was 28 when her policeman husband died tragically. She inherits the place and in flip turns into a police officer.
- Launch Date
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December 27, 2024
- Director
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Sandhya Suri
- Runtime
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128 Minutes
- Forged
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Shahana Goswami
, Sunita Rajwar
, Naval Shukla
, Sanjay Bishnoi
, Shashi Beniwal
, Prashant Kumar - Writers
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Sandhya Suri
- Distributor(s)
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Metrograph Footage
The movie’s eponymous protagonist (performed by Shahana Goswami) is a widow who replaces her husband on the police power after he’s killed on the job. Santosh’s first project is to research the homicide of a younger woman in a rural village, and he or she is paired with a extra senior and fewer idealistic feminine officer (Sunita Rajwar) on the case. Nonetheless, Santosh quickly finds out that her capability to serve justice for her neighborhood is severely restricted by the systemic corruption and misogyny within the police division, which recurrently engages in intimidation, mendacity, and even torture of suspects.
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The pairing of a cynical, morally compromised mentor with a younger, upstanding rookie reminds Time Out’s Philip De Semylen of one other Oscar-winning thriller, describing Santosh as “Coaching Day with extra gray areas.” However, as his comparability implies, what units Santosh other than Coaching Day is that the previous doesn’t fully let its protagonist off the hook for the police division’s misdeeds, regardless of her noble intentions.
The truth that Santosh is a girl solely makes her complicity in a system that marginalizes ladies and fails to guard them from violence all of the extra heartbreaking. As The Indian Categorical bluntly states, “In distinction to the vast majority of male-driven mainstream movies about cops, Santosh isn’t in awe of its protagonist. It’s, at first, a personality examine a couple of grieving lady trapped in establishments designed to suffocate her, and everyone else.” Sarah Vincent summarizes the movie’s central message much more succinctly: “Energy perpetuates itself even when the one who possesses it modifications.”
‘Santosh’ Appears to be like and Feels Like a Documentary
Dhruv Goyal of In Assessment On-line suggests that Suri’s background in documentary filmmaking informs Santosh‘s drearily mundane aesthetic: “This solemn passivity — shot cinema verité-style, unaided by any non-diegetic background rating or declarative efficiency tics — is sure to be a sticking level for individuals who affiliate Indian cinema solely with a sure sort of testosterone-fueled, heightened dramaticism.” The movie’s realistically drab, sweaty cinematography has an nearly suffocating impact on the viewers, reminding them that corruption and inequality are overwhelmingly pervasive in India (and past) and can’t be overcome so long as the established order stays in place.
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The documentary-like vibe of the movie is additional bolstered by the subdued performances by the solid. A number of critics word that, apart from an intensely emotional scene close to the start of the movie, Goswami’s efficiency consists largely of refined facial expressions (significantly in her eyes) to convey Santosh’s interior frustration and weariness, which extra carefully resembles the habits of actual folks. Goyal of In Assessment On-line describes her efficiency as “crammed with a invaluable type of hauntingly probing uncertainty,” distinct from the “loud and clear performativity” of many Bollywood movies.
Concerning the remainder of the solid, they’re primarily performed by non-actors (nearly like topics of a documentary), giving the movie a fair larger diploma of verisimilitude and geographical specificity. There is a naturalness to those performances that seems like a sort of world-building, making this city really feel like an actual, lived-in place.
Will ‘Santosh’ Win the Academy Award for Finest Worldwide Characteristic Movie?
It stays to be seen whether or not the unanimous reward of critics on Rotten Tomatoes will translate to an Oscar nomination and win for Santosh. 2024 was a very nice 12 months for worldwide movies, and it is perhaps arduous to compete with the opposite 14 movies which are shortlisted for the Academy Award for Finest Worldwide Characteristic Movie. From Floor Zero, Vermiglio, I am Nonetheless Right here, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Lady with the Needle, Common Language, Stream, and Kneecap are all phenomenal motion pictures (and Emilia Pérez just lately gained momentum with some Golden Globe wins).
Nonetheless, the truth that Santosh achieved a uncommon 100% rating ought to make it price trying out no matter Oscar gold. If that is not sufficient, then the truth that so many critics, each inside and outdoors of India, all agree that Santosh is an trustworthy and empathetic portrayal of the struggles many Indian ladies face on a day-to-day foundation proves that this is a matter which deserves extra international consideration.
From Metrograph Footage, Santosh is now enjoying in choose theaters. It involves Metrograph Footage on Jan. 18, 2025; discover info right here.