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.

Unsettling, isn’t it? Our most reliable source of information and communication can be programmed to keep tabs on our mind and movement across the multiple devices that have become indispensable crutches of modern living. But then the Internet has always been a seductive, if not secure, space where all its gifts come with its share of dangers.

There’s one significant challenge to making ‘screen-life films’ (films that unfold almost entirely on digital screens). Once you commit to its visual grammar, you’re tied to them till there’s a good reason to break out of it. No matter what, all your exposition needs to happen on the small screen, key plot points need to be hashed out during video calls, and the filmmakers need to keep imagining newer screens – ranging from iPad, mobile phones, CCTVs, GoPros, webcams, paparazzi lenses, TV screens etc.

Well into CTRL, we know the film’s protagonist only as Nella. While it’s certainly an Ananya Panday character name (past ones have been Tia, Tanya, Ahana and Bella), I did wonder if it was given by her Delhi Punjabi parents. But then we hear her father’s voice from offscreen calling: “Nalini”. And a little piece clicked into place: an assumed name, a username, a handle, in a film about unstable online identities.

CTRL lacks control. The new Indian Netflix original movie—directed and co-written by Vikramaditya Motwane—has a lot on its mind. It wishes to tackle the perils of building a business with your partner, the blurred lines between online validation and offline happiness, generational malaise and being severely attached to devices, and the dangers posed by Big Tech, deep fakes and generative AI models. There’s a lot more, some of it frivolous and the rest bordering on spoilers. And that’s exactly the problem—it cannot pick a lane. CTRL tries to pack in so much in its 100-minute runtime that it ends up doing none of it well. Worse, everything it does feels stale. We’ve heard and seen variations of this. Nothing it does shocks or surprises.

मोबाइल, इंटरनेट और सोशल मीडिया आज हमारी जिंदगी का एक बड़ा और अहम हिस्सा बन चुका है। हममें से कई की जिंदगी तो इसी के इर्द-गिर्द घूमती है। उस पर, अब ज्यादा एडवांस तकनीक AI भी दस्तक दे चुका है, जिसके फायदे-नुकसान को लेकर खूब हलचल मची हुई है। लेकिन क्या इन नई और एडवांस तकनीक का इस्तेमाल हम कर रहे हैं या फिर ये तकनीक ही हमारा इस्तेमाल कर रहे हैं? इन्हें हम कंट्रोल कर रहे हैं या हम खुद इनके कंट्रोल में हैं? इसी चिंताजनक सवालों के जवाब ढूंढने की कोशिश करती है, डायरेक्टर विक्रमादित्य मोटवानी की फिल्म CTRL यानी कंट्रोल। सोशल मीडिया या पब्लिक ऐप किस तरह लोगों के प्राइवेट डेटा इकट्ठा करते हैं, उनका गलत इस्तेमाल करते हैं, फिल्म हमें यह बात याद दिलाती है और उसके प्रति सचेत करती है।

Conjuring up a life that plays out in a virtual space - in other words, setting up a gauzy existence that floats in a dimension far removed from the real and the tangible - has its wages. Vikramaditya Motwane’s inventive, sparky CTRL examines the nature and extent of the toll that burrowing into a rabbit hole of constructed personas and enhanced engagements can extract.