Children of War, Hindi Bollywood film movie review, Johnson Thomas, rating: * * 1/2
Children of War(Hindi) Rating: * * ½ poignant but lacking in potency. The Bangladesh war has never been attempted before, so this one is a first. But that noble intention of telling a story based on true events gets frittered away in the disjointed narrative that fails to touch your heart
Children of War(Hindi) Rating: * * ½ poignant but lacking in potency. The Bangladesh war has never been attempted before, so this one is a first. But that noble intention of telling a story based on true events gets frittered away in the disjointed narrative that fails to touch your heart
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Hindi Film review
Johnson Thomas
Poignant but not potent Enough
Film: Children of War
Cast: Pawan Malhotra, Farouque Shaikh, Tilotama Shome,
Raima Sen,
Director: Mrityunjay Devrat
Rating: * * ½
Mrityunjay Devrat’s attempt at creative
representation of subcontinent history, is powerfully poignant-Especially the
parts where he is able to depict the ravages of war but the narrative feels
just a little too disjointed and haphazard to be able to gain complete
capitulation from it’s audience.
The Bangladesh war has mostly been forgotten by
Bollywood. There hasn’t been any major representation on that eponymous moment
in history in cinemas of India, so this one is a welcome first. Unfortunately,
the film takes too pointed a view on evil and fails to do complete justice to
events that conspired to the liberation movement.
So the most mind-numbing image from the film is one
that curdles the mind- a bevy of women fall out of a truck headed to a
Pakistani proson camp run by an evil jailor played venomously by none other
than Pawan Malhotra. The character he assays believes that if Pakistani
soldiers rape and impregnate enough Bangladeshi women, there wouldn’t be any
cause for a separate homeland. So the evil keeps on replaying.
Pakistan, circa 1971, bloodied and shell-shocked,
with helpless people struggling to stay alive at any cost. The sight is pitiful
and angering. Women and children are treated abominably and the pain and
anguish on their faces is deeply entrenched. The sight is gory and the acts
reprehensible. It happened. Yes. But did it have to be told with so much
vapidity? That’s relly the problem here.
Too much concentration on the evils that befell the helpless and less enactment
of the drama that ensued behind the scenes. The performances are all quite
impactful but the disjointed narrative track leads to discontinuous engagement.
At best this is a poignant depiction but not exactly a potent one!
