Govind Nihalani produced "Ardh Satya," a film with a screenplay written by Vijay Tendulkar, in 1983, during a new trend of "art cinema." The creators had concocted a narrative about a cop combating the forces of evil all around him. I was too young to understand what "Ardh Satya" meant at the time. Is it possible to have a "half-truth"? Later on, I learned that "mental dishonesty" is a synonym for a half-truth, which prevents filmmakers from exposing what may be described as "uncomfortable truth" regarding events/incidents/people.
"Please don't allow the Holocaust to stay simply a footnote in history books, please educate this in your classrooms," Steven Spielberg stated in his Oscar victory speech for Schindler's List. One should applaud director Vivek Agnihotri's efforts in creating a film that has fired up emotions across the country and brought them back together. Sir, please take a bow!!
This kind of euphoria about a movie I saw in 1975 when Jai Santoshi Maa was released, in an era of word-of-mouth publicity, appears to be repeating itself, with the so-called Bollywood biggies turning a cold shoulder to TKF, and it is social media that has added to the glee and exhilaration, making this movie a huge success that it rightfully deserved.
Much is already talked about the movie’s gruesome plot and setting, which can be termed as ghastly or spine chilling. This is the kind of movie which will leave you numb; I had a similar feeling when I had seen Sardar Udham Singh. The sad part is that I was not aware of the magnitude of pain and suffering these hapless compatriots had to endure.
Vivek Agnihotri is a very crafty writer and director, because of which movie did not end up becoming a docu-drama instead he came up with a story of young Krisha Pandit (played very well by darshan Kumar) who travels to his roots to immerse the ashes of his grandfather and discovers the “Purna Satya”. Hats off to writer Vivek Agnihotri for metamorphically creating four-character who were very close friends of Krishna’s Grandfather, they represent the Administration (IAS officer played Mithun), Security (State police played by Puneet Israr), Health (Medical officer played by Prakash Belvadi) and Press (Played by Atul Srivastav), it was a great way to show that all these four pillars of society could not prevent the unpleasant incidence in the valley. We saw in Vivek's earlier great The Tashkent File that he is skilled at switching the screenplay between flashbacks and present times, and he has done so again here. There is one top shot (drone) where Krishna is going in a shikara in the frozen Dal Lake, for me it was like an “ice-breaking/cutting” experience.
On the performance front, seldom you will come across any mediocre performance in the movie. In fact, the screenplay is so well crafted that each character gets ample screen time to outwit fellow performers. Marathi actor Chinmay Mandlekar and Pallavi Joshi are too good in their dark avatars, while the veteran Anupam will remind you of his Saransh days and has probably given his best performance to date.
Last few days due to my hectic India visit I could not share “my takes” promptly, apart from this movie I had seen Jai Bheem and Pawankhind (Reviews are coming soon).
Coming back to The Kashmir files, let me end with an apt quote by George Orwell, “ If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people, what they do not want to hear” Unquote. Team TKF did the same – take a bow guys.
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