On “Rani”: Focus on Your Family, Not Your Phone
Focus on Your Family, Not Your Phone
On "RANI" directed by Hiba Rahman
“Rani” is a Pakistani short film eponymously titled after the main character, Rani, who works as a housekeeper in a middle class household and has aspirations for upward mobility. The son of the house is a social media influencer and has a phone that “only” costs 150,000 rupees (almost 540 USD in 2024). Rani finds the number itself exhausting, but also sees this as the necessary cost to fame. It’s not explained why she thinks this exactly because it seems as if correlation truly equals causation in the beginning.
At first one thinks that she’s looking for more attention that social media can bring, but it’s only scary clear when she takes her son to buy a better phone from the black market for him to make videos with that she tells him she can replace the wedding ring she sold with ten rings when they become TikTok famous. The beginning of the film starts with a one-shot following various people glued to their phones as they walk around the neighborhood. Some are texting and some are filming videos for social media (one person appears to be doing shadowboxing).
The film shows how this neighborhood isn’t looked after, perhaps explaining why people are seeking an escape into their phones. It doesn’t appear as though everyone is seeking a financial way out of their situation, but a social one. This seems likely as the person who sells Rani and her son the possibly stolen phone, poses as a religious figure on social media, telling others that stealing is wrong. Evidently, he’s not promoting his store– just himself.
We see this reveal in a montage of her mourning the death of her son in a filming studio with a proper lighting set up as she’s filmed by the son of the household she works for. “More tears equals more likes,” he says, as he gives Rani eye drops. Rani had not only sold her ring to afford the phone, but she said she received an advance from her employer, which one could assume at the end was the boy, the son of the house. While Rani is obviously complicit in the murder of her own son, the role of the rich son can’t be ignored, regardless of how subtle it may have been.
While such thieving and killing could be common in their neighborhood, the decision to film their reaction in a professional studio might not be the first thing on a mourning parent’s mind. The unique content had to have been ideated and constructed by someone who had the leisure to hypothesize what would work on social media and how to best position the content so it attracts a wide range of viewers.
Director Hiba Rahman’s use of climax creates an effective method for creating entertainment value. Her use of dark humor to employ social commentary by way of sour tasting and yet entertaining red herrings makes one curious about the work she pursues next.
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