In many ways, a half-decent critic’s job is antithetical to a half-decent filmmaker’s. The former has to – concisely, directly, and definitively – extract the essential meaning from a filmic text usually overflowing with meaning; they have to “explain” something that, in the best-case scenario, will always remain thrillingly unexplainable. But when filmmakers themselves resort to summarizing, clarifying, and, worst of all, sermonizing, there’s little left for the critic (or any enthusiastic audience member) to do.
Nowhere is this overexplaining at the cost of drama more apparent than in films centered around millennials and Gen Z struggling to juggle their real and reel lives. Technology is evil in shows like ”Black Mirror” (2011-) and movies like ”Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan” (2023). We, too – most often represented as the “characters” on screen – are idiotic. So, like any good parent or teacher, the film recites the disadvantages of overusing social media before regurgitating tried and tested solutions. Is this engaging drama? Or is it just an annoyingly condescending lecture that, counter-intuitively, prioritizes (artificial) intellect over (real) people?
Dhruv Solanki’s debut feature film, ”It’s All in Your Head” (2023), currently playing on Gudsho, is, if nothing else, a film about real people. It chronicles one day in the life of six twenty-something Rajpurohit siblings who run an online thrift store called “Durty Fits.” There’s zero clarifying or summarizing the dual lives these people lead on social media and off-it; the satire, too, is largely absent, despite the press notes insisting on it by positioning the Rajpurohits as a “Kardashians-like Rajasthani family living on a budget” in Vadodara, Gujarat. Solanki’s approach is purely observational: he wants to give us a peek into these siblings’ dazed and confused personal and professional lives and, through that, if at all, comment on the crucial (or not) role technology plays in it.
The film’s opening five minutes suggests it most definitely does. Shot on an iPhone in portrait mode with four of the six Rajpurohit siblings just about managing to fit into the picture’s constrictive 9:16 aspect ratio, the opening throws us right into the siblings’ reel life. They are celebrating Durty Fits’ first anniversary, and each sibling, through the flamboyance (or lack thereof) of their costumes and actions, establishes the character they choose to project for the audience. For instance, Bonita and Manshree, two of the six sisters aspiring to make it big in film and modeling, respectively, demonstrably take center stage.
The former, especially, draws the most attention by gleefully performing sexually suggestive gestures deemed inappropriate for such videos. Bhagyashree is relatively subdued, playing the “good girl” to offset Bonita’s naughtiness. And Bhuvnesh, the youngest and seemingly shyest of the lot, gets to show off his neat dancing skills. It’s an eclectic mix of characters that the camera – always static and placed at a respectable distance from the Rajpurohits – captures without much judgment. Yes, there are times when the visual artifice – Instagram color filters, glittering effects, and jump cuts – accentuates the siblings’ overall loudness to grating levels. But, equally, there’s an infectious chemistry between the siblings that, because of the aspect ratio’s constrictive verticality, is also visually amplified.
Cut to the film’s opening credits, still shot on an iPhone but in a conventional 16:9 aspect ratio. Other juxtapositions follow: rowdy night becomes quiet morning, glittering dresses become office uniforms, and the reel becomes real. It feels like Solanki is positioning his film as a sharply perceptive satire that, like Sean Baker’s ”The Florida Project” (2017), is going to critique the protagonists’ real way of life without condescending to their reel or real one. No musical cue tells you to notice these differences between the real and the reel. Nor is there needless voiceover telling you which way of life is better. Solanki is simply depicting the stark difference in the image that the Rajpurohits’ project on Instagram to the mundanity of their everyday existence.
On the one hand, this mundanity brings with it boredom and emotional and financial struggle: Bhagyashree is doing a job that she doesn’t like, Deepshika and Jyotsana (introduced after the film’s opening credits) are going through a rough patch with their respective partners, Manshree, Bonita, and Bhuvnesh are trying to make it big in the art world. But it also brings a certain ease: none of these people, especially around each other, converse in the affected English they seem to put on when they appear online. They’re clearly more comfortable with the mix of Rajasthani and Hinglish as it allows them to talk more naturally, even spontaneously, with each other.
Had the entirety of ”It’s All in Your Head,” clocking in at a short runtime of 83 minutes, persisted or pushed further into its gently satirical but firmly humanist perspective, it would have possessed the jangled emotional potency of a Sean Baker film. Instead, the rest of the film seems to undermine the satirical underpinning a little too much, choosing to follow at least five of the Rajpurohits, almost lackadaisically, throughout one day.
Yes, the lack of conventional structure and the film’s unflashy camerawork and editing allow Solanki to slyly comment on eco-degradation and warped gender politics through character drama. But the overall shapelessness also blunts its ability to generate genuine affect; the film works most successfully when the satirical undertones and humanist overtones are in sync, positioning the Rajpurohits as much a product of the digital age as self-aware divas of it.
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