What is Love? Especially in the 21st century, the age of the internet, the age of swiping left and right on people, the age of ‘spoilt for choices’.
Turn to pop culture and Haddaway says “What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me no more”, Euphoria says “Love is a thousand different things”, and if the New York Times is to be believed author Tim Kreider’s quotable lines that now doubles up as a meme says “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”
But all I for one know of love is that it’s messy, doesn’t make sense, can’t be explained, and is a thousand feelings trying to be squished in a rather tiny heart-shaped box.
Perhaps that is exactly how Sudoku For Poets, an independent short film written, shot, and directed by Ayera Choudhary and Raymond George Dias functions in the vast expanse of the internet.
Essentially a conversational piece made in the format of video-call conversations, the film beautifully tries to explore the idea of love between two young people. What essentially makes or breaks a relationship and if two people with differing ideologies on love can co-exist in a relationship.
“This blackout poetry thing is like sudoku for poets don’t you think?” asks the cynical partner at the beginning of the film and it is through this idea of exchanging blackout poetry that we see the ostensible end of their relationship.
“A radical optimist in love with a cynical romantic, they wrote a film to tell you about it. So here it is and there we are; in love, in bruised knuckles and fisticuffs,” said the two young filmmakers.
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