Madaari(2016, Streaming on Zee5): This is not the first film that raises the burning issue of corruption by espousing vigilanteism. But Madaari moves you to tears. I had to watch it twice on two successive days to absorb the immensity of the late Nishikant Kamat’s treatise that –and I quote from the film’s stunning climax—corruption is not part of our political system, our political system exists for corruption.
There. It’s out in the open. The terrible frightening truism that has manoeuvred apna mahaan Bharat into a mahaan mess. With brilliant impunity Madaari builds a case for self-justice when all systems collapse and you’ve nowhere to go but to your conscience to escape the feeling of complete annihilation. One such bereft inconsolable soul is Nirmal Kumar who has lost his son to corruption.
Somewhere in the middle of the saga of this one man’s plea for justice, we see Nirmal in an emptied-out hospital corridor grieving for his suddenly-dead son . Irrfan makes this moment so effortlessly intense, so brimming with a fluent angst…. we are not watching a brilliant actor at work.We are not even watching a father mourn for son’s demise.No.We sit there watching Irrfan lament for every person who has lost out to an irreversibly corrupt political system.
On the surface Madaari is just a slick cat-and-mouse chase-saga about a vigilante and a cop(Jimmy Sheirgil, as usual effortless). But scratch the surface.What we get are some of the most thoughtprovoking dialogues on the rot in presentday politicking heard since Javed Akhtar penned a pained political parable in Main Azaad Hoon.
Yes, the political system has failed us. So what are we doing about it? Madaari doesn’t have a solution to the monstrous imbroglio that shrouds the Common Man’s hopes dreams and aspirations. But it does tell us that simply sitting around waiting for a miracle to change the political system won’t happen. The cleansing process is wonderfully executed in Madaari. Director Kamat’s film is not only provocative and evocative it’s also very cleverly put together. The editing (by Aarif Shaikh) creates a special affinity between the wounds of time and the processes of everyday existence which cruelly wash away the tears of the wounded.
By adopting a brisk attitude the bereavement Madaari tells us we can’t sit and grieve indefinitely for our losses. We have to seek redress on our own. This is the subliminal thesis that thunders across the gracefully paced film which never sacrifices its sensitivities to appear to be a stylish thriller.
Stylish and thrilling, Madaari certainly is.Cinematographer Avinash Arun films the two sets of characters—the aggrieved and the aggressors—using almost antithetical colour palates and moods. As Irrfan and the little boy move across various differing locations we see the changes in the topography almost as signs of the growing relationship between the host and the hostage.
It is easy to miss the film’s deep-seated passion to extract powerful emotions from situations that have been milked to maudlin death in our cinema. Overcoming its clichéd karma Madaari still moves us , sometimes to tears.The bonding which grows between the kidnapper and the little boy is played out with a heartwarming blend of paternal emotions and a convivial kinship .The little boy Vishesh Bansal who plays the kidnap victim brings much wisdom and understanding to his part , so much so that when he tells his kidnapper at the end that he knows what the bereaved father was trying to do we see that look of enlightenment in the boy’s eyes.
As for Irrfan, what can one say about an actor who forgets to act? So real palpable and urgent is the father’s grief that we are no more looking at a brilliant and skilful actor at work but a father mourning for the loss of innocence . At the end we see Nirmal Kumar standing in a seashore washing his son’s memories.We hope that the message which he brings to us remains with us.
Yes, the politicians come across as caricatures. But aren’t they often just that in real life too?Madaari is a film that must be shown in every educational institute in India. It doesn’t offer a formula to eradicate corruption in politics. But it does tell us why we need to fight back before it’s too late.
Uri(2018): Wars often rage within the soldiers’ hearts, specially when they belong to army families. In one of this significant war film’s highpoints, Major Vihaan Singh Shergill, played by the self-effacing Vicky Kaushal , gathers his troop together somewhere in Kashmir before striking surgically in the country nextdoor(okay, Pakistan. There. I said it).
These are soldiers who have lost loved ones in terror attacks,and their blood boils.
Uri brings the blood of cross-border tension to a boil but avoids a spillover. There is a rush of patriotic pride in the product—and why should there not be?—but it is reined-in , curbed and never allowed to spill over in a gush of irrepressible jingoism.If you want to see soldiers dancing around a bonfire singing about how much they love their country and how much miss their loved ones, then you’ve got the wrong war film.
Yes these soldiers love their country. But family comes first.And when Vihaan’s brother-in-law(Mohit Raina,making a striking big-screen debut) is killed in a vivid recreation of that real-life murderous attack at the Uri army base, Vihaan channels his personal loss to seek revenge on behalf of the country. It may not be the most patriotic of purposes. But it gives a certain disingenuous believability to the mission.
All through its roomy yet tightly-wound running-time Uri confidently gives us people and situations from that golden chapter in BJP’s existence when India voluntarily forfeited the politics of pacifism to take on the enemy headlong.
The narrative is stylish and the political figures, from a dapper Narendra Modi(played with a refreshing absence of mimicry by Rajit Kapoor) to a droll Rakesh Bedi(playing a belching Pakistani politician), are all people whom we instantly recognize , not only by the way they look and talk but by their propensity to push the narrative into top gear without toppling the narrative into an excessively zealous jingoism.
While the actors playing Indian soldiers are uniformly(pun intended) credible the film’s technical polish may come as bit of a surprise to those of us who have resigned ourselves to substandard VFX in our cinema . Uri is shot with astounding finesse by cinematographer Mitesh Mirchandani. Every frame is a thoughtful recreation of the moment in time when in 2016, Indian soldiers pushed their way into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to seek revenge.There is no pitching for effect. The drama and the fury flow organically.
Revenge served cold is said to be effective. Writer-director Aditya Dhar serves it up piping hot. The locations and the gunfire exchanges are perhaps the best we’ve seen in Indian cinema.The sound-design and background score capture the pain of lost human lives without bleeding out a banshee of road signs for our emotional responses. The tone of narration avoids overstatement . Dhar avoids the temptation of selfcongratulation. Barring a dialogue like, ‘Ghar mein ghus ke marunga’ which doesn’t really belong to this film of graceful comeuppance,there is little chest-thumping here.
The performances add considerable weight to the drama. While Kaushal surrenders to his character’s conflicts without intellectualizing them, I must make a special mention of the underused Kirti Kulhari who plays a small enigmatic part as the daughter of a disgraced army officer waiting to redeem her family pride…almost like the war genre in Indian cinema that had gone from Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat and J P Dutta’s Border to Dutta’s Paltan.
Uri is a work of many achievements. But to me,a film about national pride without a single shot of the Indian flag is the biggest miracle since the invention of the motionpicture camera. This is a glorious beginning to 2019. And if patriotism is the flavour of the year, bring it on, provided it’s not about Paki-bashing.Just getting even.
