Movie Review: Hemlock Society

Hemlock Society is a tollywood movie which I refer to as ‘sarcasm at its best’. It’s not romantic, It’s not emotional, it is not a revenge flick and not even a non sense masala action film; it is a dark comedy, the specific genre which has only been established a limited number of times in the history of Indian cinema. The title justification refers to an institute named Hemlock Society which trains students on how to commit suicide in the correct way. The students are of course suicide aspirants.

The story starts with our female patrogonist Meghna, played by Koel Mallick catching her fiancé cheating on her, he breaks up with her hence cancelling their marriage. She already is broken having a step mom, a dad and misses her real mother. Enters Ananda Kar (Parambrata Chatterjee), who while buying condom in a medical store sees her buying sleeping pills prescribed by her doctorate father on her insistence. He reaches her house and stops her from taking those pills and flushes them off in the toilet. He then offers her to do a free suicide crash course from his institute ‘Hemlock Society’. 

The next day he forcefully picks her up in the morning and takes her there. She is shocked to see the madness there,i.e as follows; like other colleges, this institute also has faculty members who teach how to die by hanging with rope, which medicines to take in order to get ultimate poisonous action, how to shoot yourself to death, how to die by getting yourself trampled on railway track etc. This institute also claims that once the suicide aspirant has completed the course, he/she is awarded a certificate.

This movie successfully evokes in a person the awareness and importance of life. It’s tag line is ‘morbe moro, choriyo na (If you want to die, go ahead, but don’t spread the word )’. The movie may look a little slow at first but once the duo reach the institute, the film becomes a great source of social and sarcastic entertainer. Lastly I’ll say there are a few films you really feel proud to have watched, as far as my taste is concerned, this is one such movie. I feel lucky to have watched this movie.

If you have seen this movie, do let me know your opinion, you can also rate this review at this link.