The invention of lying (2009)

The term ‘high concept’ film may be new to Indian audience, but it’s rather a famous one on the other side of the world. What a high concept is a ‘What if’ scenario, like what would happen if something unexpected or sheer impossible thing happens, like, what if a robot can come from future to kill someone (Terminator series), or what if different kinds of aliens come to earth and start fighting each other (Transformer series), or what if an Indian woman can’t recognize her husband if he shaves off his moustache (Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi)… alright, don’t panic, I was kidding about the last one.

The movie in question deals with another such scenario, what if lying was never invented? Or simply put what if everybody only speaks the truth? Intrigued, well so was I. The movie takes place in a hypothetical scenario where nobody knows about lying as nobody has lied, ever. You may start believing the situation to be too good to be true, but it is not what you imagine. As nobody lies, people bluntly say what they think, never caring about the feelings of other people, as nobody can see beyond the obvious, there is no imagination or creativity, and there is no fictional literature or movies, just plain documentaries.

Our hero is a fat looser, who works as a writer for a documentary production company, as he is assigned the 14^th century to make documentaries, a century where nothing exciting happened,  he ends up making very boring and depressing movies, and gets fired from the job. To make things worse he is also rejected by a very pretty girl as well, because she feels he won’t have a perfect genetic code for their children if they ever marry.  

Things take a turn when he goes to the bank to withdraw money, but as the system is down the cashier asks him how much money does he have in his account, and there in a flash he lies by telling the casher that he has $800 in his account instead of the actual amount of $300, initially he himself is not sure what he has done, but soon as he realize that he is the only man in the world with the power of lying, then he starts turning his miserable life into an extraordinary one.

What is beautiful about the movie is that after building the basic premise, the story goes further deep in the concept by analyzing the aftereffects of lying, the scene where our hero creates the concept of ‘Man in the Sky’ i.e. God, is outstanding, and so is the scene where he consoles his mother.

Although there are a few times when some characters just speak for the sake of being funny, which could have been easily avoided, however so, the movie altogether makes a compelling watch, not only for having a new idea but also executing it beautifully.

Rating ***1/2