FILM: Shahid
CAST: Rajkumar Yadav and Tigmanshu Dhulia
DIRECTOR: Hansal Mehta
Stop right here. Shahid is the sort of rare raw unnerving journey into a socio-political reality that our cinema needs to undertake regularly but seldom does. Our filmmakers largely veer away from doing films whose redolent realism could ruffle political feathers.
First and foremost, Hansal Mehta’s film on the real-life slain lawyer Shahid Azmi is a fearless work.
Fearless and unfettered, Mehta wastes no time in establishing the monstrous marginalization of the Muslim community in a society where terrorism has blurred the majority community’s sense of propriety to the extent of unmitigated bigotry.
Shahid is an exposition on abject isolation. There is a harrowing sequence of police brutality in the film where the film’s Muslim lawyer-hero sits on the hard floor of a police station stark naked shivering as the cop repeatedly accuses Shahid of terror activities.
The protagonist’s absolute humiliation at that point in the narration hits us where it hurts the most.
Predominantly “Shahid” is about an impatient society anxieties to find scapegoats for the growing violence all around us. In a language that embraces the complexities pertaining to the issue of Islamic isolation, Mehta’s film cracks open the code of that unexplored genre of cinema known as the drama of persecution.
In Shahid, Mehta chronicles the life of lawyer Shahid Azmi with the kind of deft clenched directness that one encounters in the docu-dramas of Costa-Gavras or nearer home, the searching searing cinema of the uprooted and isolated individual that Adoor Gopalkrishnan specialises in.
The silence of the night is punctured by the shrill sound of the phone. Slurred threats are hurled. Taking the abuse on his chin, the crusading lawyer, played with scintillating austerity by Rajkumar Yadav, sits stoically at the centre of the debris of destruction of distrust as he undertakes a jehad to prove the innocence of the arbitrarily accused.
There are some highly poignant electrifying courtroom sequences shot with the languorous devastating dinginess of courtrooms that have killed off all chances of justice for the damned.
What would those wretched TADA undertrials, locked up and left to languish for life, have done without Shahid Azmi to fight for their lives?
Now I ask you, what would Shahid Azmi’s character have been like if was not portrayed by the very gifted Rajkumar Yadav?
This brilliant actor, whose forte is underplaying, imbues Shahid’s role with the kind of tightly-reined tumult and an unspoken anguish that actors in our cinema seldom get a chance to put forward in the characters they play. Here is a performance that deserves a standing ovation, primarily because it doesn’t scream for attention.
In comparison, the other performances appear pale and distant, albeit authentic and thoughtful. Tigmanshu Dhulia is notably powerful in a brief cameo as an eminent lawyer.
Shahid’s relationship with the divorcee mother is never satisfactorily rounded up nor assimilated into this courageous man’s fight for justice for those who are condemned not only by law but by social stigmatization.
What comes across with forceful impact is the protagonist’s yen for justice.
This man who has suffered the worst humiliation and suffering in custody won’t allow the same shame and pain for those who are wrongfully confined.
This man means business. We must hear his story.
Of course, he pays with his life. Whether it’s Romeo or Shahid, all heroes must come to a suitably sticky end. That’s what you get for trying to be a hero. Sometimes while you try to be larger than life, life creeps up on you to make its own outrageous claims.
“Shahid” is a crucial document of our troubled times. It builds an incredibly gripping case-study of persecution and vindication. The treatment of the topical subject is never ponderous or polemical. Mehta has set out to convert the slain lawyer’s valorous tale into an authentic exposition on the residue of retribution.
But what to do, if the end-result is so darned gripping?
Shahid is a must-see film with an absolutely impeccable subtext that can be read as an urgent warning against the politics of isolation practiced by many political parties.
Be warned. You might be voting for violence. (IANS)
FILM: Captain Phillips
CAST: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus, Corey Johnson, Max Martini…
DIRECTOR: Paul Greengrass
There seems to be a deluge of survival stories hitting the theatres of late. After Prisoners and Gravity, this week we have Captain Phillips. What’s interesting is that each film is better than the other.
Captain Phillips is a tale of conflict between men who refuse to give in. This forms the crux of this effective thrilling drama.
Based on the book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty the film is a subtly rousing docudrama that recounts the 2009 hijacking of an American cargo liner and the harrowing experience of its captain.
The screenplay, by Billy Ray, begins very innocuously in a chronological fashion with Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) bidding adieu to his wife Andrea (Catherine Keener) in their hometown in Vermont, US.
The wary and by-the-book person Captain Phillips reaches Salalah, Oman, to take charge of the container ship Maersk Alabama carrying emergency aid for East Africa among other cargo to Kenya in Africa.
On board the ship, he carefully checks security and safety procedures after being routinely warned about the unsafe waters he would be sailing in. In fact, he insists that his men have a mock drill just to be prepared.
Simultaneously, on the shore of Ely in Somalia, in a scene so reminiscent of Vittorio de Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves” a group of young impoverished khat chewing fishermen are being recruited by rifle toting goons as pirates. After the selections, two motor boats with a crew of four each set sail in search of their prey. Soon they are tailing the Maersk Alabama.
What follows is a battle of wits between Phillips and the pirates. There’s an unusual reverence and understanding between Muse (Barkhad Abdi), the leader of the pirates and Phillips throughout this ordeal that fuels the tension.
Director Paul Greengrass astutely balances the narration by staying neutral till the very end. He has ensured that the account is not over dramatised. He has taken pains to see that neither the captain nor the US Navy are glorified and nor are the pirates condemned or portrayed as some heinous beings.
Humour comes in the form of the staccato one-liners like, “Shut up Irish, too much talking” or “Do you think I am a beggar” from Muse. This actually breaks the tension of this intense drama.
As a no-nonsense middle-aged captain, Tom Hanks is courageous and vulnerable, dedicated and clever. Yet, he is incredibly human and fallible. This is probably one of his career’s best performances.
On the other hand, Barkhad Abdi as the bony, buck-toothed Muse is fascinating. He is fidgety and naive. As a first time actor, he strikingly delivers Muse’s greed, fear and pride.
The rest of the cast too give a realistic display of their histrionics, especially those portraying the pirates from Somalia.
On the technical front, camera work by Barry Ackroyd is initially unsteady.
What keeps “Captain Phillips” grounded is the focus of the tale and the emotional tinge it contains. (IANS)