Even propaganda deserves a
better standard than Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files.
The last half an hour of the movie is pathetically propagandist with sermons of
all sorts. The concluding frames left me nauseated. No, there was absolutely no
need to show every single one of those murders. Especially that little child’s.
Not so unaesthetically, at least. Cinema is an art, Agnihotri bhai, not an insipid
ad for your pet ideology.
The first
half had some good drama. I thought I made the right decision to watch the
movie though none of the reviews I had read gave me any reason to make the
decision. Soon drama gave way to blood-curdling scenes. Violence of all sorts.
Terrorist violence on the one hand and violence on art on the other. If the
Muslim terrorists in Kashmir committed the former, Agnihotri’s direction did
the latter.
The word
‘narrative’ is mentioned again and again in the movie especially toward the
end. The Kashmir Files is a narrative and little more. It is a narrative
created by a right-wing Hindu propagandist. Everyone who is not a right-wing
Hindu is a villain in the movie – as well as outside, by insinuation. All
Muslims are murderers or crooks. All liberals are caricatures who have devious
and dubious faces. Secularism is filthy. In fact, Agnihotri goes to the extent
of hammering down the narrative that the terrorists in Kashmir and the liberals
in ANU (JNU?) work hand in glove with each other.
The
protagonist is a mere puppet in Agnihotri’s hands. Krishna Pandit (Darshan
Kumar) was born in Kashmir but was brought up outside as his parents and
brother were among the numerous Pandits killed by terrorists. Everyone except
Krishna knows the truth about him. Krishna appears to be too innocent – to the
extent of appearing naïve if not foolish – until he learns too much in too
little time. He blindly trusts Prof Radhika Menon, the liberal caricature of
ANU, and then the leader of the terrorists with whom Radhika is seen in a
photograph. Then when the character of Mithun Chakraborty delivers another
narrative, he laps up that. And after all that, this masoon ladka
suddenly comes up with encyclopaedic knowledge about India’s great heritage and
the monstrous Muslim villainy that had swallowed up all that heritage for a
long time. In that moment of the protagonist’s epiphany, we get a long sermon
from him, a moral science class that can beat PM Modi’s Mann ki Baat.
“Some facts,
some half-truths, and plenty of distortions.” That’s what The Kashmir Files
is in the end. The verdict belongs to Anuj Kumar of The Hindu. Shailesh
Kapoor, founder-CEO of Ormax Media says that the movie caters “to a right-wing
sensibility in sync with the current mood of the nation.”
The current
mood of the nation has made the movie tax-free in the BJP-ruled states. The BJP
will reap political dividends from this movie which promotes hatred without
limits. Hatred, aversion, revulsion… such are the tastes that linger in your
sensibility as you walk out of the movie hall having watched The Kashmir
Files.
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| PM Modi with the movie's crew |
Art should produce the opposite kind of feelings. Art is a purification of our negative feelings and reinforcement of positive ones. The Kashmir Files achieves just the opposite.
Hari Om
ReplyDeleteThe great trouble with films is that not many are going along to watch with a critical mindset such as we may do - though having read up a bit on this one, it does seem that a fair number of folk are recognising the revisionst nature of it. One wonders if a film about the earlier Jammu massacres of Hindus and Sikhs upon Muslims would have even got licensed under current regime? The tit-for-tat business there leaves no one shining... YAM xx
This tit-for-tat is what I'm worried about too. They are out to take revenge for all history's mistakes! Any good leader would work on the present for a better future. Our man is concerned about the past and that too about its blunders and crimes. So we'll get more such films and more hatred.
DeleteI don't think, I will ever get a chance to watch this 'kashmir saga' now getting acclaim for its propaganda mission. 🤔
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's better you don't watch it.
DeleteA shrewd businessman who deals in such kind of things knows very well that bad publicity is, after all, a kind of (beneficial) publicity only. Hence the best thing to do with such propaganda movies is to ignore them and do not discuss much about them. By doing that we do nothing but play into the hands of the filmmaker and the man behind him (no prizes for guessing his name). It is also not the first film made on this issue (as wrongly claimed and propagated in loud voice). The first movie made on this theme was Sheen (2004) which I had not only seen but also reviewed. It was also made by a Kashmiri Pandit only. It's by no means a great movie but a sensitive one and it does not invoke hate against any community.
ReplyDeleteThis is absolutely true. I feel like someone who stepped on shit after watching this movie. I stink.
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ReplyDeleteThe movie has given rise to a massive divisive debate in every social media which in its formidability and enormity is incomparable and all encompassing. If this goes on forever the outcome will be disastrous. How can we thrive as a civilization on so much hatred and distrust.
The ultimate tragedy of contemporary India is the quantum of hate being peddled day in and day out.
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