Very worthy of its three laurels (Cannes Festival, Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival, Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival), Ei Taxi is a short film that anyone with the slightest literary appreciation can fall in love with. The film has a particular relevance in today’s Indian society as it follows the guilty subconscious of a perverted taxi driver who is projected through the astonishingly beautiful woman who is recurrently found in his taxi. You do well to raise awareness about the prevalence of these social problems today.
The dramatic slow opening scene consists of an emphasis placed on the magazine that the host is looking at with a gaze that turns out to be quite disturbing to the viewer, portraying his obviously depraved thoughts. Then the mysterious woman takes advantage of her taxi and they have an intriguing conversation, in the middle of which she vanishes into thin air. She reappears again in a different outfit next to which viewers can only boast that she is her lover. The video then moves on to the next shot of the driver waking up to find the woman motionless. Surprised, seeing her fall as dead when he touches her, he checks her pulse and recoils in horror at the lack of it. He then proceeds to bury her. However, moments after the fact, she appears, very much alive, back in her taxi.
This whole sequence of events seems to happen in the surreal environment of your mind’s subconscious. The setting is certainly so full of mystery, as the plot itself as a purple-tinged light motif acts as a symbol of its dreamy state. This is also hinted at in the blurry shots that appear vague and cloudy, never showing a clear shot of any of the characters’ faces. Therefore, almost like in one’s dream, the images are not clear.
The video serves as an exploration of the dirty male Indian mindset that considers women only worth attacking in the dead of night, never more than a warm, curvy body to satisfy men’s needs. However, the face of the woman he dared to act inappropriately with, even in his own imagination, haunts him. These hallucinations were likely caused by intoxication, but the reason behind this is not what turns out to be significant here, but rather serves as a projection of your mind afflicted with consciousness.
The Taxi allows to know the functioning of the brain of an average Indian man, defining it as the prey of his own desires, but also of his own scruples.