Firaaq

Firaaq

 HE GHOULS OF GENOCIDE IN AN EXTEMPORE EMOTION

Directed by: Nandita Das

Written by: Nandita Das & Suchi Kothari

Starring Naseeruddin Shah, Deepti Naval, Shahana Goswami, Paresh Rawal, Raghuvir Yadav, Tisca Chopra

Review by: Usman Khawaja

 ++Review:++

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 impersona...