Actors: Nana Patekar, Sanjeev Jaiswal and Atul Kulkarni;
Director: Ram Gopal Varma;
Rating: ****
Somewhere
in re-telling the bloodbath, torrential shower of bullets and bombs
that rained down on Mumbai on Nov 26, 2008 a little child sitting lost
amidst a carpet of corpses in the posh hotel lobby of the Taj Mahal
Palace Hotel weeps on the gleaming white marble floor now reduced to a
bloodied mess. We then hear another round of gunfire and then, the
child’s weeping ceases.
The way the soundtrack is used to denote
unimaginable brutality and violence in that sequence reminded me of the
massacre sequence in Ramesh Sippy’s “Sholay”, where Gabbar Singh
sadistically raises a gun, points it at a defiant child (Master Alankar)
and then the soundtrack cuts to the sound of a train chugging into the
railway platform.
Varma, in the finest filmmaking foray of his career since “Satya” and “Company”,
offers us no comfort of cinematic licence in “The Attacks Of 26/11″.
Not his fault, really. The unspeakably aggravated violence of the events
we see unfold in front of our disbelieving eyes happened in, and to,
Mumbai just five years ago. Believe it or nuts.
It could happen
again. To any city. You or me. That is the terrifying reality that
perpetually underlines the gripping narration, clamping the brilliant
writing of Rommel Rodrigues down to a whittled numbing sense of hardcore
reality where all thrill ends and the feeling of dread begins to creep
upon us. We are finally left with only a profound sense of dread and
fear.
Welcome to the world of terrorism. The world that we live in.
The
volume of research that has gone into the recreation of the events on
that fateful night when Mumbai city was under a sanguinary siege,
miraculously escapes italicisation in the narration. No aspect of
Varma’s storytelling is exaggerated. He displays remarkable restraint
even in the way the background music punctuates the relentless violence
perpetrated by a handful of self-styled jehadis who crept into Mumbai
through water and soaked the city in blood, making sure that the people
of this rapidly moving metropolis would never sleep in peace again.
Varma steals our peace for keeps.
While
the first hour of the film graphically recreates the violence that
Ajmal Kasab and his gang unleashed in various strategic centres of
Mumbai, where maximum impact was ensured for their mayhem, the second
hour of the dread-filled drama, turns into a riveting ruminative debate
between the police commissioner
Rakesh Maria (Nana Patekar) and Kasab (Sanjeev Jaiswal).
The energetic yet bridled equipoise created between these two
polarities of the human existence so effortlessly slips into the zone of
a moral debate that we end up listening to echoes of infinite resonance
beyond the words that they exchange with such scathing contempt for one
another’s moral values.
The dialogues on the relevance and true
meaning of the tenets in the Holy Quran between Patekar and Jaiswal
simmer with an inner discontent, sparking off a kind of existential
turmoil in the narrative and in the audience that takes the narrative
way beyond the immediate context of terror and terrorism.
While
Nana Patekar displays exemplary austerity over his physical and
emotional expression of the anguish that every Indian feels for the
humiliation of terrorism perpetrated on 26/11, Sanjeev Jaiswal, though
every effective as Kasab tends to go overboard. But then we can’t really
expect subtlety of expression from someone who has been brainwashed by
his mysterious ‘Aaka’ into believing that killing innocent Indians would
fetch him a ticket to paradise.
The extravagant violence is not
tampered with, though the vantage points of the terror attacks are
whittled down. Varma doesn’t spare us the details of the demoniacal
attack on Mumbai city, when a group of armed men killed men women
children in luxury hotels and public places.
“Don’t show any mercy to women and children,” Kasab’s colleague counsels before they rain bullets on innocent civilians.
The
recreation of the terror attacks on Leopold Cafe, Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus, the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and Cama Hospital are so chilling
in their vivid detailing that we end up watching scenes of violence not
for their cinematic element, as much their unflinching affiliation to
the actual events.
Full marks to the superlative technical
team. Harshad Shroff and M. Ravichandran Thevar’s cinematography
captures every moment of the bloodcurdling events with a
documentary-like ferocity.
The
graphic terror attack sequences are edited (by Sunil Wadhwani and Ajith
Nair) in a pattern that replicates the suddenness of the attack. The
sound design, and that includes Amar Mohile’s muted but angry background
score, doesn’t sound designed. It seems a vocal ‘ear-witness’ to the
carnage that unfolds in front of our shocked eyes with unsparing
viciousness.
By the time the film’s mordant milieu melts into a
chilling climax, we are no longer watching a film. Varma takes his
narrative way beyond the semantics of the cinematic language. The merger
of recent history of terrorism and the more human drama that underlines
the violence is achieved with a muted cry of anguish that any
conscientious Indian would hear in the narrative, if he only cares to
listen.
RGV compels us to watch and think.
What the movie tells us is that the wounds of the night, must not be allowed to heal.
Watching the horrific events in this outstanding film is an experience
that defies the normal cinematic experience. This is a deviously
dramatic and authentic recreation of the ghastly terror attack.
The
film’s end-credits roll backwards suggesting that the film imperatively
took us back in time to recent history so that we don’t repeat the same
mistakes of a lax administration failing to cope with suicidal terror
attacks. RGV ends the film with a moving rendering of “Raghupati raghav”
in the background as Nana Patekar’s character gazes hopefully into a
peaceful ocean.
Nana holds the film together. He feels every line that he utters. His heart bleeds for each one of the 166 people who died on that night.
When he tells Kasab in a choked voice, “I have a son your age”, Nana isn’t faking it. His performance goes way beyond acting.
One of the best films in recent times on the wages of terrorism, and on a par with Katheryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty”,
“The Attacks Of 26/11″ is a stunning wake-up call for those of us who think Mumbai’s night of terror cannot happen again.
With
this one work of riveting resonance, Varma has wiped away the bitter
taste of his last half-a-dozen films. Gone is the sluggardness of the
‘rogue technique’ that shook not just the camera, but also the core of
this director’s creativity in recent works.
Welcome back, Ramu.
tags : rgv 26/11 movie review, 26/11 movie review,RGV The Attacksof 26/11 movie review, The Attacksof 26/11 movietalk.
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