What a haunting frame (see image). While Sanjay Dutt was blessed by an almost perfect casting given how the actual SP Aslam matched Dutt's generic screen personality, Ranveer played an astoundingly varied, immersive range of emotions. He has given good performances before but I did not think his work would stand so tall among the absolute titans that Arjun Rampal and Akshay Khanna are -- who themselves presented a deep study of their characters.
Just to ensure understanding, the dots connected in the movie are very real, their impacts of these events on Indian psyche is very very fresh and is currently unfolding. Decades of Pakistani doctrine of bleeding India with a thousand cuts, decades of India's neutered "do nothing" pacifist paralysis and mute spectatorship of our people's deaths, and decades of USA's tacit support of Islamic travesties across Indian subcontinent -- created a mix of events that completely changed the character of India. And a movement that was quietly working on India's margins with the exception of Sindh, became fully mainstream, finally unleashing the wrath of a fed up pacifist. But we should not forget that the thread connecting the dots is a narrative, albeit the most likely one.
Dhurandhar by Aditya Dhar is a ~7 hour long saga of a composite spy (multiple R&AW operative experiences combined into one for dramatic effect), which tries to match the real life violence endured by the people of Indian subcontinent at the hands of islamic extremism and its karnadhars (spoiler: it doesn't even come close, the real extent of violence under the ambit of topics discussed in the movie is much, much greater). With newfound political patronage, the directors of this specific niche have become increasingly vocal, prominent and prolific -- but still did not manage the financial success that such an important topic merits. Mostly it was due to the shortcomings of the works themselves. They made mistakes in the presentation, choice of words while doing prachaar, scale of production, limited vision etc. For example, I criticized Baramulla for failing to maintain realism or Article 370 for deifying Modi -- you can't duck to avoid a close range bullet shot and no large scale political reform can be without its negative effects, worthy of mere glazing. These problems vanish in Dhurandhar because the action is shot in such high octane pace (well, also some jittery camera movement like the annoying Bourne movies) that suspension of disbelief becomes easier and only clips of 2014 and subsequent political changes are used instead of full fledged characters.
The rahman dakait part of the movie seeks to establish our composite spy in the universe and so the first four hours of the movie really dwell on the scenes, on the reactions of the characters, their motives, their justifications. In this time, Aalam is set up as a low profile life saver, Rizwan as a solid support, Major Iqbal as the thoughtful compensatory precise brutality of Pakistani Army after 1971, Uzair as the sentimental fool, etc. In this time, through Rahman Dakait, and the huddle of terrorists around major Iqbal's office, we observe a system of financial, societal, religious and political incentives and punishments set up to provide the inevitable escalation ladder that make a likeable Baloch community leader into a full fledged betrayer of his own people and an active participator of violent Jihad against people who he doesn't particularly care about. This sets up the stage to naturalize other such characters like SP Aslma, Jameel Jamali, and Khanani brothers. You don't need to actually spend time explore their background and a simple infodump is enough to make us understand what they want and where they are going.
Instead, that time is spent is showcasing, in its full merciless no-holds-barred look at the massacre in mumbai through the lens of the Iqbal collective in Pakistan. Harrowing stuff. The evilness of Rahman is established like Duryodhana's act of burning the lakshagrih does in Mahabharata. And a spectacular end to the segment sets it down. The allusions to Khalistani extremism also set the stage for what is to come: the look into the effect of the violence in Punjab on the lives of its people -- for some reason it is always characterized as Indian state activity of dealing with the insurgency but never as what the insurgency itself did to the society (exactly analogous to Kashmir in terms of the suppression of pacifist Muslims and mass murder of minorities). The characteristic toxic masculine and misogynist nature of Bhindrawale's terrorism is reflected in how the local feud plays out -- in field and in court. And we see this masterful frame (see image).
From here, the pace of the film flips and we go through the events at a very fast pace, with unrelenting background score, not studying the events unfolding before our eyes, probably compressed by the director to shorten the segment span. However, the actions-reactions of the characters do make you think more on what happened later -- which in my view, is not ideal. Most of the thinking and framing of concepts in a movie should happen right there, while the events are unfolding. Little more study of Shirani's pain of watching his community get obliterated even though he aides the chosen representatives of his community in Karachi (the damn Sher-e-balochs), of the radicalized Baloch kid, of the geography and surroundings of muridke mosque, the embedding of such centres in surrounding terror networks, the involvement of people like Dawood Headley, the compromised principles of Army towards the security of their own deranged nation, the speculated role of Dawood Ibrahim as the lynchpin of the whole anti-Hindu, anti-India shebang etc. We just quickly thread through the remaining kill-list of our composite spy, a particularly satisfying one being Zahoor Mistry.
Even so, I loved the vignettes of the spy's interaction with his long separated friend, with his ill-fated wife, of the follow up investigator after SP Aslam, of Iqbal's father (so metaphorical!). What a well composed movie. What well composed frames. Like they say, peak detailing by Aditya Dhar.
I couldn't help but notice the stylistic traditions followed here; a big name flashes in my mind: Ram Gopal Varma. A dude already going off beat in southern cinema, leaked into northern movies and created a genre defining faultline, a cinema of liminal spaces, of transitions, of spaces where ravi does not reach but kavi does. The jarring glittery bright frames of mumbaiya chalu cinema are left behind and the earthy brownness of southern cinema pervades the screen (like Pataal lok) If the latter half of the movie were allowed to breathe, it would have been as good a movie as Gangs of Wasseypur -- but then it would have maybe also become a niche and not a hit. But this is the point of making more and more movies. You open a leaf, you take a dig, you fail, and the next time you bring out more beauty, more authenticity. then you self examine and ensure that next time you are more authentic. So many stories languish in this land of stories that is Aryavarta, that is Bharata. So much beauty, so much love, so much pain, so much potential, so much strength -- waiting to be found by the community at large, waiting to be unleashed, waiting to be re-embedded in the once grand panoply, brought to life in a new, rapidly changing world.
For reference: every single gory event in the movie has a well mapped real life counterpart, like the beheading of arshad pappu, the killings of terrorists by unknown gunmen, the brutal throat slitting by zahoor mistry -- apart from things for which direct clips of the brutality is inserted.
