Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Sanjay Suri, Shahana Goswami, Raghuvir Yadav ,Tisca Chopra
Cinematography: Ravi K. Chandran
Editing: Sreekar Prasad
Art Direction: Gautam Sen
Screenplay: Nandita Das, Shuchi Kothari
Story Writer: Nandita Das, Shuchi Kothari
Director: Nandita Das%20of%20DSC_0065.JPG)
Shocking, disturbing and thought-provoking, Nandita Das’s movie Firaaq touches a raw nerve.
Admittedly a work of fiction claimed to be inspired from thousands of true stories, ‘Firaaq’ (meaning quest, or separation) mirrors the gruesome reality of the Gujarat riots in which many Muslims and Hindus were slaughtered.
‘Firaaq’
provides us a peek into the after effects of the riots by taking us into the minds of the characters that populate its parallel stories. The gravity of the subject is established in the opening reel when a truckload of dead bodies are dumped into a mass grave.
A homeless boy Mohsin wanders the streets in search of his Abu. A middle-class housewife Aarti ( Deepti Naval ) battles her guilt of having shut the door on a desperate Muslim woman pleading for life. A Muslim-Hindu couple, Sameer and Anu, ( Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra ) grapple with the altered reality of their surroundings and plan to leave the city. A group of Muslim men gang up to take revenge. An ageing musician Khan Saheb ( Naseeruddin Shah ) is unable to comprehend the senseless violence and massacre. Two sahelis, Munira and Jyoti ( Shahana Goswami and Amruta Subhash) manage to stick together in the environment of communal hate and suspicion.
With calculated restraint, sensitivity and subtlety, ‘Firaaq’ tells the story of these characters in a bid to rattle the conscience of the viewers and make them realize the horrendous crimes that took place in the Gujarat of 2002.
However, it needs to be said that some might find the film one-sided because it repeatedly portrays the victimization of Muslims – be it a cop telling a Sameer Shaikh (Sanjay Suri) to buzz off to Pakistan, or a local resident dropping a heavy stone slab on a man’s head just because he is a Muslim.
But all in all, Nandita Das does a fairly decent job of telling a multi-layered story with seamless clarity. The performances are top notch, particularly by Deepti Naval, Shahana Goswami, Naseeruddin Shah and Paresh Rawal , who plays a middle-class, anti-Muslim Gujarati trying to cover up the rape committed by his young brother.
Looking beyond the film’s theme, ‘Firaaq’ is a cinematic gem with excellent cinematography (Ravi Chandran), well-penned screenplay (Nandita and Shuchi Kothari) and evocative background score.
Despite its somewhat narrow perspective, it’s a film made with conscience and noble intention, as reflected in a scene in which Raghuvir Yadav (a domestic help) tells Naseer that Muslims are being killed. Naseer replies: “Insaan Insaan ko maar raha hai, gham toh iss baat ka hai. A statement that entreats us to see humans beyond their religions, it pretty much encapsulates the soul of ‘Firaaq’.
Definitely worth a watch.
Rating: ****
Firaaq - Movie Reviews
Gulaal
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Aditya Shrivastava, Piyush Mishra, Deepak Dobriyal, Ayesha Mohan
Producer: Zee Limelight
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Music Director: Piyush Mishra
Lyricist: Piyush Mishra
Cinematographer: Rajeev Ravi
Editor: Aarti Bajaj
Art Director: Wasiq Khan
Story: Anurag Kashyap, Raja Chaudhary,Aparna Chaturvedi
Stories about a simple man’s anger and outburst against the corrupt, corroding system have been seen and forgotten by the dozen, and Anurag Kashyap’s angst-ridden Gulaal turns out to be just a statistical addition to the list.
True, the movie is hard-hitting and a telling statement on the degeneration in the political structure both at the micro level of student politics and the macro level of power-hungry, tyrannical megalomaniacs who stop at nothing to realize their political ambitions. It starts off pretty well as Anurag Kashyap introduces the characters, and it develops momentum as the murky motives are unveiled. The movie, however, becomes a hodgepodge in the second half as it climaxes to a blood curdling crescendo all because of a one-sided love story gone horribly wrong.
Dilip
Singh ( Raj Singh Chaudhary ), a simple, soft-spoken nerd comes to Rajasthan to study law but gets unwittingly sucked into the vortex of student politics after his roommate Rananjay (Abhimanyu Singh), a candidate contesting college elections, is bumped off.
Dukey Bana ( Kay Kay Menon ), an influential figure who dreams of wedging out a splinter Rajputana state, takes Dilip under his wing and makes him win the post of General Secretary through rigged elections.
Dilip’s rival in the elections, Kiran (Ayesha Mohan), and her cunning brother (Aditya Shrivastava) are unable to digest their defeat. Kiran lures Dilip with love and sex. And he – like any able man in his right senses – succumbs to the temptation. But gradually the dirty, murky political game is revealed to Dilip as he finds Kiran take over political powers from him and dump him and move on to play her amorous tricks on the bigger shark – Dukey Bana.
Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned. Dilip, the simple, gullible, bespectacled wimp who was ragged into spending days naked inside a room with a female professor ( Jesse Randhawa ) when he joined the college, now takes to the gun after realizing that he’s been used as just a pawn in the bigger game.
‘Gulaal’ is essentially a character driven story that seems to get too verbose at places. The dialogues are expectedly sprinkled with expletives because the director apparently wanted them to sound ‘real’. The cinematography by Rajeev Ravi is superb. Music and lyrics by Piyush Mishra are intriguing.
If there’s anything truly worth watching in ‘Gulaal’ it’s the performances by the ensemble of talented actors from Kay Kay Menon as the devious Dukey Bana to Deepak Dobriyal as his assistant or Mahi Gill as his mistress.
Newcomer Raj Singh Chaudhary has an unassuming persona and convincingly portrays the inner transformation of his character. Ayesha Mohan and Aditya Shrivastava as the brother sister duo are terrific in their individual performances.
All said, ‘Gulaal’ is a seething, simmering, but tortuously predictable tale of all that’s rotten in the system. All through the movie you get an uncanny feeling that the director has pooled all his anger, angst and cynicism against the system and spewed it on the screen to be smacked at the faces of hapless viewers in the form of ‘Gulaal’.
Frankly, there’re better things to do with your time and money than have a taste of someone else’s angst.
By Nikhil Kumar
Film critic, ApunKaChoice.Com
