‘Orijinal’ uses time travel to question originality itself

When the makers of Orijinal named the film so, with the play of alphabets signifying protagonist Rijin’s name, they were probably acutely aware of the lack of originality of the time travel concept on which the film is built.

This awareness is also acknowledged in hat tips to classic films of the genre such as Back to the Future in the dialogues as well as through a character wearing a yellow jacket inspired from the popular German series Dark.

Director Ramees attempts to make up for this lack of novelty by using the whole film to raise pertinent questions on originality, especially in cinema. The time travel trope becomes an excuse for the portrayal of a man introspecting his life choices and then using the accidental gift of time travel to make amends, not always in the right way. It mostly plays around the inherent wish in many humans to correct their past.