Release
date:
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May 11, 2018
|
Director:
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Meghna Gulzar
|
Cast:
Language:
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Alia Bhatt, Vicky
Kaushal, Jaideep Ahlawat, Rajit Kapur, Shishir Sharma, Soni Razdan, Amruta
Khanvilkar, Arif Zakaria, Ashwath Bhatt, Aman Vashisht, Cameos: Kanwaljeet
Singh and Sanjay Suri
Hindi
|
An elderly Kashmiri gentleman
called Hidayat (Rajit Kapur) travels back and forth between India and Pakistan
under the pretext of business dealings, when actually he is serving as a double
agent between both countries. His friend in Pakistan, Brigadier Syed (Shishir
Sharma), is convinced that Hidayat is spying on India for Pakistan. The truth
is the exact opposite: Hidayat is a loyal lieutenant of India’s Intelligence
services and, as it happens, the son of a freedom fighter.
As his life nears its end, he
wants to ensure that his mission is not disrupted at this delicate juncture –
the year is 1971, when India-Pakistan tensions are running high in the midst of
the liberation war in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. It dawns on Hidayat that
continuity can come if his daughter Sehmat (Alia Bhatt) marries the Brigadier’s
son. The catch is that she is a mere teenager
– a college student in Delhi University – and untrained, and there is no
telling whether she will go along with her father’s plan. She does. In short,
she is raazi (willing). And soon
enough she is the bride of Major Iqbal Syed and a resident of the Syed family
home in Pakistan through which passes crucial national security documents and
senior members of the country’s defence forces.
Given the circumstances, you know
your heart is at risk, even if Sehmat’s is made of stone, when it turns out
that Iqbal is played by Vicky Kaushal. Unless his character is decidedly
villainous, this is an actor who has the ability to reach into your ribcage,
rip your heart out and tear it to shreds.
Watch Raazi to find out if that is indeed the effect Iqbal has on the
viewer, but I can tell you already that that is precisely what the film as a
whole achieves. Meghna Gulzar’s latest directorial venture, based on Harinder S. Sikka’s novel Calling Sehmat, is a
heart-stopping, heartbreaking espionage drama the beauty of which lies in the
fact that, in the era of chest-thumping nationalism and hate-mongering that we
live in, this India-Pakistan saga holds out an unexpected healing touch.
“In a war, nothing else matters
but the war. Not you, not I, just the war,” a significant character in Raazi tells Sehmat. Although this is the
premise on which the establishment operates on both sides of the border, the
film’s overriding theme is the human cost of war. And so it compels us to ask
uncomfortable questions. Are undercover agents callous or dutiful? Does a
father have a right to sacrifice his daughter’s future at the altar of a
nation’s safety and survival? And above all else: If there is pain on both
sides of the divide, then who is benefiting from this confrontation and why, in
the name of all that is logical, are we fighting?
This is the kind of story that
conventional Bollywood would drench in bombast, condescending clichés about the
‘good Muslim’ and “aisa nahin ki unke sab
log bure hai” (it is not as if all ‘their’ people are bad) sort of
dialogues. If you have seen Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar (2015), you know of course that she is anything but conventional.
Raazi’s screenplay by Bhavani Iyer and
Ms Gulzar, with dialogues by the latter, is a political tightrope walk that
never lets up. Sure there is a line about the watan / mulq (country)
being above all else repeated by more than one actor, but it is woven so
smoothly into the larger picture and delivered so naturally by the actors in
question, that it serves its purpose without trumpets blowing or bugles
calling. Even a line from Hidayat about how Sehmat is a Hindustani first and
then his daughter passes muster, although it is the closest the film comes to
bowing to Bollywood traditions in these matters.
So yes of course, there is a –
necessary – point being made about the patriotism of a Muslim Indian citizen
from insurgency-ridden Jammu & Kashmir, but by not spelling it out or
emphasising her Kashmiri Muslim identity, Team Raazi delivers the gentlest of slaps in the face of Islamophobes
and advocates of hatred who dominate the current national political discourse.
Raazi says so much else without
feeling the need to say it. Its feminism, for one, goes beyond the obvious fact
that it is a woman-centric film. In the emotionally wrenching number Dilbaro, with music by Shankar Ehsaan
Loy and lyrics by the legendary Gulzar, a daughter sings: “Fasle jo kati jaaye, ugti nahin hai / betiyaan jo byaahi jaaye, mudti nahin hai (when a daughter is
married off she does not look back) /
Aisi bidaai ho toh / Lambi judaai ho
toh / Dehleez dard ki bhi paar kara
de.” Note the irony of those words, coming as they do during the wedding of
a girl who, far from conforming to the social norm of turning her back on the
house she leaves for marriage, proves to be one of her home country’s most
invaluable assets.
As much as it is a poignant story
of human relations, Raazi is a
suspense thriller so tautly executed that I could feel knots of fear in my
chest for several hours after I had stepped out of the hall. The unrelenting
parade of risks and twists owes as much to Meghna’s conviction as to Nitin
Baid’s brisk editing, Kunal Sharma’s intelligently crafted sound design and the
nerve-wracking background score by Shankar Ehsaan Loy & Tubby.
A further boatload of kudos to
the music directors for imbuing a Pakistani patriotic anthem with emotional resonance
for Indian viewers. Ae Watan –
written by Gulzar and incorporating
lines from Allama Iqbal’s Lab pe aati hai dua (not mentioned in the credits, but in the Making of Ae Watan video) – is beautifully sung by Sunidhi Chauhan
and the Shankar Mahadevan Academy children’s chorus. It marks a turning point
in Sehmat’s effort to win over the people in her new life.
Jay I. Patel’s camerawork is
intrinsic to the nervous edge that is a constant in the narrative. He seems to
shadow Sehmat rather than shoot Bhatt, and is particularly responsible for
underlining heightened stress levels in a scene involving a chase down a lonely
street.
The lynchpin of this enterprise
is Bhatt’s stupendous performance as Sehmat, with the young star once again
displaying the maturity and confidence of a veteran on camera. She is as
convincing wielding a gun as she is crying her heart out at the betrayal that
is unavoidable in the task she has taken on. By mining his innocent persona,
the astonishingly versatile Kaushal becomes a perfect match for the baby doll
looks that Bhatt uses to carefully camouflage her character’s iron will. In his
Iqbal Syed there is not a trace of the serial killer he became for Anurag
Kashyap’s Raman Raghav 2.0 in 2016.
The supporting cast is a roll call
of strong artists. As Sehmat’s trainer, Jaideep Ahlawat of Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) gets a role worthy of his talent after a
gap. Ashwath Bhatt as Sehmat’s brother-in-law is remarkable in a smaller
part.
(Spoiler
ahead) With all
its achievements, the film does slip up in one important aspect of Sehmat’s
operations in Pakistan. For a girl who displays instincts that belie her lack
of experience, her decision to do so much of her work by a curtainless window
is surprisingly amateurish. I realise that in traditional and country homes in
the subcontinent, bathrooms with glass and uncovered windows are not uncommon –
our ancestors and rural folk seem/seemed to place an inordinate amount of trust
in human decency that our species has not necessarily justified – but it struck
me as a glaring loophole that such a bright girl would commit such an error.
The only reason why I am prefacing this paragraph with a spoiler alert is that
I do not want to ruin the experience for viewers who may not agree or may not notice
what I believe is a gaffe.
Her other mistakes, if they can
be called mistakes at all, can be put down to her youthful inexperience and/or
sense of urgency coming from awareness of an impending crisis, but this one
calls for considerable indulgence on the part of the viewer – indulgence that,
I confess, I have willingly given, swept away as I was in Raazi’s sincerity, political sensitivity and overall appeal. (Spoiler alert ends)
The information Sehmat conveys to
her bosses in India is related to Pakistan’s planned attack on the Indian naval
vessel INS Vikrant during the 1971 war, which was the subject of the 2017
Tollywood film Ghazi (Telugu), also
made in Hindi as The Ghazi Attack.
That film was primarily a defence forces procedural. Raazi, on the other hand, is an espionage venture with heart and
soul tempering its gritty core. Even as it kept me on the edge of my seat for
its entire 140 minutes, it broke my heart.
Rating
(out of five stars): ****1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
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140 minutes
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A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:
