This follows on from my last blog. Here I reproduce my review of `FIRAAQ` posted on the Africana-Orientalia forum on October 16, 2008. I then had further occasion to refer to it after the Mumbai bombing, which sparked off a wide-ranging debate. I will cover that in the next item under possibly another heading.
Message #30332> Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:57 pm> Re: FIRAAQ - A film not to be missed!
I saw FIRAAQ this afternoon, on the second day of the London Film Festival, and cannot praise or recommend it too highly. It is a masterpiece: a rounded, probing, conscience-pricking, highly accomplished film debut by Nandita Das better known as a Bollywood star. It is set in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots of 2002, in Ahmedabad (though the name of the city is not exactly spelt out). The credits tell us that it is a work of fiction based on a thousand true stories, but as Nandita explained both before and after the show, what she and her co-writer have done is to piece together many different factual accounts - from a variety of people of what they saw or heard during the troubles that resulted in a massace of Muslims - into a powerful narrative on film.
The characters represent a whole cross-section of society, from slum-dwellers to the upper middle-class, both Hindu and Muslim. Their lives are intertwined in many different ways and on a multiplicity of levels - through incident, accident, chance and fate - the film clevely weaves them together. There is the middle-middle-class Hindu family, where the loud mouthed husband rules the household with an iron fist, which he is not ashamed to use even on his middle-aged, largely servile and silent wife, who is guilt-ridden because she had ignored the pleas of desperate Muslim women from the neighbourhood seeking sanctuary from Hindu mobs engaged on a frenzy of murderous attack and destruction. She gives shelter to an orphaned Muslim boy, called Mohsin, whom she renames Mohan (for his own protection) searching for his father whom he had last seen being attacked, again by another group of Hindu fanatics. But Mohsin runs away from her when he witnesses her husband hit her and finds the atmosphere in their house oppressive. Then there is the young working class Muslim couple, with a child, whose house has been vandalized and virtually destroyed when they had fled to save them-selves. The interaction between the young mother and her Hindu friend, who work together as henna artists, is one of the running threads of the film. There is another young couple - but upper middle-class with a `mixed` marriage, between a Hindu wife and a Muslim husband with the `neutral` first name of`Sameer` that has insulated him against the prejudice and hostility of the majority Hindus among whom they all live. To him the riots are a rite of passage to a painful understanding of his vulnerability and second-class status. Without going into too much factual detail - though this is graphically and extensively explored in the film itself - suffice it to say that the sheer ignorance and patronizing that characterise Hindu attitudes, words and actions all through towards the Muslims in their midst are truly shocking and reveal the ugly side of India`s secular society. There is also a group of angry young Muslim men who are plotting their revenge, and again we are shown a side of India that is rooted in violence and reactive posturing. Finally, the old music master, a Muslim living among Hindus, with a faithful Muslim servant who tries to keep him, as played by Nasreerudeen Shah, is a weak character who is out of his time and place, who too has to come to terms with the ugly realities of Hindu-Muslim dynamics.
As a production, I could not find any faults with it. This is a must for all those who are obsessed with `Bharat Mata`. The message of the film, if one can call it that, is that violence is no answer to any supposed grievance - it merely undermines and diminishes humanity.
Nandita Das also stars in the Pakistani film, to be shown in the LFF on 20 October, called `Ramchand Pakistani`. I will write about it afterwards.
RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England
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