Firaaq (Das, 2008)

[fizz]

"Firaaq" is a commendable first attempt for actress turned director Nandita Das. It starts with very potent words - "This film is a work of fiction based on a thousand true stories".  Set a month after the violence in Gujarat, India in 2002, during which thousands of people, mostly Muslims, but many Hindu's as well, were killed or lynched for being who they were - Muslims or Hindu's.

The film shows us that the casualties of this tragedy were more than the dead - many of the living were forced to live in isolation or persecution. It successfully traces how people's lives continued to be affected because of their interdependency on each other. In a country of many diverse languages and persuasions, rickshaw could be driven by Muslims and stores owned by Hindus and if any one side rejected the other, paralysis would set in because people would rely so intimately on each other. We see this by way of a slice of life approach of interconnected stories, proving how well integrated any tolerant society can be unless that calm is disturbed. In violence and madness there is no rationality and India's secularism and tolerance was put to the test during this period.

Of all the different people we follow, the most interesting plot thread is that of an an interfaith couple. How they deal with the aftermath with friends and immediate family is examined with sufficient depth. The husband, whose name Sameer is common (and very popular) as both a Muslim and Hindu name, has some truly great moments of introspection that reflects one of the challenges of the diversity. Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah is also outstanding as a Muslim teacher of music to a mostly Hindu student base, who seems shielded by the extent of the riots thanks to his protective servant.

That the film is just and fair in many of its portrayals is unquestionable. Because Muslims were more severely persecuted and were also the racial minority, their suffering was enormous; this the film acknowledges well. The choice to set the film a month after the actual event is unique but also thematically timid however in the grand scope of things. As powerful as the film was, I was left wondering how much more it would have conveyed if it had been made in the spirit of Paul Greengrass' "Bloody Sunday" or even the French film about the Paris massacre "October 17th 1961", both of which share similarities with Firaaq in structure and tone. For audiences unfamiliar with the history behind the event or its background, opening title cards may not be enough to make them understand why whatever happened occurred in the first place. Had the film, through its various narratives, explored this, which I think it did, it may have had more resonance.

Rating: 3/5

[shariqq]

Glad you caught this Fizz. I guess I'll give it a pass at DIFF, but will try to catch it later, mainly for Naseer and his servant (I guess played by Raghuvir Yadav, another powerful performer).

[sandeep]

An excellent directorial debut by Nandita Das, who has explored so much emotion, pain and grief, in the most simplistic, direct and natural manner. The film is tense, as we follow around the various characters in their lives. I felt lost, jumpy, after the movie, thats how effective it was...

As an Indian, it makes one very sad, shamefull actually, that such atrocities took place in our country not too long back. The inhuman way people were treated was an eye opener, because they hardly showed it. They captured what you and I would feel, watching the news on the TV, but took it one step further as they showed the effects on people's daily lives. People lost their sense of balance, their sanity, their trust. They were on the brink of loosing their faith, because the sheer cruelty they saw around them, but thankfully they didn't and it saw them through that terrifying time.

People lived in constant fear, anxiety, have nightmares, aren't ready to embrace their religion, their name even, because of the prejudice attached to it. The condition of the camps, the mental state of the city, the pulse of the people, has delicately been captured, yet its not in your face.

A highly recommended, yet heavy watch. You may not have known so much about the incident, or may have forgotten, but this is a good time to see history and remind ourselves why our strength lies in a strong secular India.

4/5

[shariqq]

Director Nandita Das' debut feature Firaaq takes place in the aftermath of the Gujarat (India) riots of 2002, a sectarian clash between Hindus & Muslims, and plays out mostly from the point of view of victimized Muslims. A little boy orphaned, an aging Music teacher abandoned of students, a working-class family with a burnt home and a white-collar executives facing his fear of being a Muslim. These chronicles play along the 101-minute run of the movie mostly working as depictions of the different marks of society that the riots had scorched. Among these is a Hindu housewife who is consumed by the guilt of being cowardly and helpless during the events. The intelligent actress that Nandita Das is, she pulls out all plugs to make a preachy movie, and hence sometimes goes overboard with the 'hate' angle. Reality could have possibly been worse, but many-a-times random innocent seeming characters act out in absurd spiteful ways that it becomes a prerequisite for the movie's audience to be aware of the actual riots, its cause and extent. Also, forcing sympathy out of the audience by focusing on a child's large black innocent eyes is also exploitative - of the child, and the audience.

Rating --> 2.5 of 5

[kaykay]

FIRAAQ
THE GHOULS OF A GENOCIDE IN AN EXTEMPORE EMOTION

Written and directed by Nandita Das.
Cast: Tisca Chopra, Shahana Goswami, Deepti Naval, Paresh Rawal, Naseeruddin Shah, Sanjay Suri, Raghuvir Yadav. 101 mins. In English, Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati

Review By: Usman Khawaja

The opening montage reveals the theme in grandiose horror, where dilapidated corporation lorries are dumping mounds of butchered corpses in a Muslim cemetery in the spring of 2002 in GUJARAT, as the two fatigued grave diggers bury them in mass graves, one spots a female corpse with a Hindu icon and starts to hit her in a spontaneous rage while the other tries to restrain his visceral rage on an already dead human being.

Nandita Das has populated her inherently complex theme of religious strife and genocide in overt and subtle overtures where her ambiguous characters mingle in a relative time frame torn with strife.

She observes this nightmare from the eyes of a seven year old orphaned Muslim boy who awaits the incipient return of his beloved father butchered in the carnage.

The boy is both a mascot of hope and a bitter reminder of the fragile bond that binds the two nations in the same homeland as he observes the atrocities with his vacuous dazed stare which is the hallmark of great cinema as it is neither a sentimental tearjerker or a sermon on morality but an observation of a bleak truth in anticipation of no optimistic relief.

Das has written the script flawlessly mingling her two communities in the immediate aftermath where a largely guilty Hindu majority is sympathetic yet afraid to overtly express their disapproval of the state sponsored genocide.

Deepti Naval is haunted by the face and pleas of a Muslim woman who begged her to let her in to escape the marauding mob but She did not have the courage to perform a simple deed but it haunts her as a nightmare ,in lieu she takes in the young Muslim boy as a servant and pretends he is a Hindu lad which is an impersonation as bleak as the battered landscape of gutted homes and deserted streets ,and so powerful in its truth as to describe the whole essence of the tragedy.

yet we have Mugheera, played by an excellent Shahana Goswami, a married Muslim woman with a child who had gone into hiding during the horrific riots and returns to find a gutted home and deep mistrust of her Hindu neighbours, the idea of segregation is introduced by her scepticism of living with life-long friends who she now blames for the ruins of her homestead .
Sanjay Suri plays a professional upper class Muslim married to a Hindu lady of means who as a couple are debating to leave Gujarat for Delhi but is their identity going to change with the venue.

This debate is intensely  insane and that is the crux of the circumstances created out of a sordid political scam which has changed the life of these human beings irrespective of their beliefs forever, and further crowned by Naseer uddin Shah playing a great Muslim vocal musician living in a Hindu majority area who is in denial of the riots and blames the whole thing on a ruined economy, as he awaits his Muslim disciples to arrive he ponders on the illusion of musical instruments and the exigency of divinity, and his ultimate pessimistic observation of the destruction of a Muslim shrine in the vicinity is emotionally devastating as he tries to find the beloved  building which has been obliterated.

Nandita Das has for once immensely reversed the Bollywood sentimentality of the religious strife and passed it from the world of entertainment to grey shades of reality entrenched in art.  The performances aside, the sparse music and absence of songs packed in 101 minutes of tumultuous drama which sheds a new light on the contemporary Indian social structure where an icon like a BINDI can be a life-saver is an iconoclastic classic in itself.

The child here is the future of the state that is left without any security and is destined to become a slum dweller to the detriment of the community itself.

As she observes the terrorised Muslim community trying to escape or trying to attempt some form of revenge she is both sensitive and serene but never sentimental as her vision is immersed in the reality of the time frame which is created immaculately by a very committed team work.

The taunting army officers who ask Suri to take her Hindu wife and immigrate to Pakistan is the truth she wants us to dwell upon and she succeeds in every moment of the precious stock used.

A horrendous and spellbinding debut by a fecund intelligent female mind who redeems the mediocrity of Bollywood by her anguish ridden Muslim protagonists and the equally guilty yet reluctant Hindu inhabitants ,this fuses the tragedy of the event without indulging in any protest but in doing so becomes a lasting emancipation for humanity itself.


As suggested by the opulent Urdu title, this is a ballad of morose and melancholic poetic beauty that impresses your heart with a seal of turbulent emotional deluge yet it remains impassive simultaneously in its mourning of the symbolic communal separation as suggested by the metaphorical term itself.