Tag: meghna gulzar

At a time when the Hindi movie trade insists on portraying enemies from throughout the border as kohl-eyed barbarians thirsty for Indian blood, Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi, launched in 2018, looks like a relic from a long-forgotten previous. The movie’s humanist portrayal of Pakistanis ushered in a brand new period of Dharma motion pictures that continued with Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl and Shershaah. These movies regarded hyper-nationalistic on paper, however couldn’t have been extra totally different from the form of irresponsible hogwash that Sooryavanshi, Uri: The Surgical Strike and Bhuj: The Pride of India peddle within the title of mass ‘entertainment’.
Proving that he can go each methods, Uri star Vicky Kaushal performed the jazz-loving, elaichi-munching man of tradition Iqbal, the Pakistani soldier who marries Alia Bhatt’s Indian spy in Raazi. It appears virtually unthinkable that the movie launched a couple of months after Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat, which was controversial for all of the mistaken causes. While a bit of the general public actually put successful out on star Deepika Padukone, her co-star Ranveer Singh’s problematic portrayal of Alauddin Khilji was not adequately criticised for its historic inaccuracy and offensively stereotypical tone.

By most accounts, Khilji, regardless of his imperialistic methods, was really fairly the sophisticate. Not the ‘savage’ who gnaws meat off a bone, cackles like a hyena, and goes all Kabir Singh on a lady, as proven within the movie.
This ‘otherisation’ is totally absent in Raazi, a movie that pulls off the unattainable and truly will get you to care in regards to the women and men throughout the border. That, in itself, may very well be controversial as of late. To a minor diploma, it was even in 2018, when Harinder Sikka, the writer of the supply novel, launched an assault in opposition to Gulzar and Karan Johar for, get this, not making the film patriotic sufficient.
I might argue that Raazi, together with Amit Masurkar’s Newton, are the 2 most patriotic Hindi motion pictures of the final decade.
Vicky Kaushal and Alia Bhatt in a nonetheless from Meghna Gulzar directorial Raazi.
Everything that we have to find out about Bhatt’s Sehmat is conveyed in her introductory scene. Spotting a squirrel staring loss of life within the eye, Sehmat rushes to its rescue however injures herself within the course of. Dizzy on the sight of blood oozing out of her foot, she asks her pal to assist her. In lower than a minute, it’s clear to us that Sehmat is compassionate, and at her core, non-violent.
This is wise screenwriting; it foreshadows a later scene, and highlights what’s arguably the movie’s central theme. More than an hour later, when obligation compels her to take a life, Sehmat is irreparably damaged. Such is the psychological influence of the incident that she retreats right into a shell for the remainder of her life. Sikka took offence to this, stressing that Sehmat acquired a hero’s welcome when she returned to India, and by no means doubted the morality of what she had achieved within the subject. It seemed like his challenge wasn’t the humanisation of the enemy, however the humanisation of Sehmat.
But for all its progressiveness, the movie’s gender politics stay sketchy. This side of the film hasn’t aged in addition to the remaining. Despite being such a resourceful particular person, Sehmat shows a curious lack of company. Life-and-death choices about her are made by the boys in her life—first her dying father, who sacrifices her for the nation; then her handler, who actually tells her in a single scene that she isn’t allowed to make choices; after which, emotionally, her husband. To the movie’s credit score, when Sehmat’s father is hatching his plans, Jaideep Ahlawat’s character, the handler Khalid, calls him out on it. “Sehmat se poochha tumne? Bataya beti ko ke uski kismat mein kya likh rahe ho?” he asks, and Sehmat’s father affords some aggressively imprecise reasoning about espionage primarily being the household commerce. “Humse poochha humare walid saab ne?”
Later, he wonders if he’s making a mistake by sending her away. But then, Sehmat spouts rhetoric that comes dangerously near sounding like one thing that brainwashed folks would say: “Aap kehtein hai toh college laut jaati hoon. Lekin mere abbu ne bhi mujhe wahi taleem di hai. Ke watan ke aage kuch nahi. Khud bhi nahi.”

But beneath Gulzar’s assured course, Raazi holds up very well. It may need even change into extra related within the years since its launch. A detailed cousin to Yoon Jong-bin’s The Spy Gone North, Raazi is a terrific instance of what the spy style can obtain when handled with tenderness, and never cheesy populism.