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1971- Simply Superb!

When I was a kid; I used to like watching Ramayan, Alif Laila, Krishna and all those stuff made by Sagar brothers. But at the same time; I did not like their terrible technical ignorance and over over over the top acting. Can you imagine a camel cart with rubber tyres in age of Alif Laila or that typical hindi filmy back ground music in Ramayan. In 60s and 70s, Ramanad Sagar made some good movies like Geet, Charas and Aankhein. But after that Sagar brothers made aweful movies and serials with pathetic technicalities, over the top dramatic performances and cheap budget. They made a film on Bhagat singh and the opening sequence was of a jail. And can u believe they show animated version of jail in a live action film.

But new generation of Sagar Family seems to be more knowledgeable than their previous. 1971 is their new generation product and the film is one of the good movies came out in 2007.

Though the basic storyline is same as “Deewar: Let’s bring our heroes home”; 1971 is quite effective and better than Deewar. I liked Deewar because of its fast pace, action and Amitabh Bachchan; at the same time I liked 1971 for its honesty in story telling and technical brilliance.

There are no Pakistan bashing dialogues, no dramatic songs and no over the top patriotism. Story & Screenplay (Moti Sagar & Piyush Mishra) is concentrated on one line- “escaping of prisoners of 1971 war from Pakistan”. No love story revealing scenes of prisoners. No special song for main protagonists. There are two songs in the film and they move story forward. The song “bhangda paanu jee karda” has some basic instruments playing in background and it has much more effect than any techno beat song coming out these days.

Some of the memorable scenes revealing excellent cinematography (Chirantan Das) and editing (Shyam Salgaonkar).
Before Subedar Ahmed Explodes bomb; the images of his home and family members- excellent.
When Major Suraj Singh (Manoj Bajpai) tries to remove bullet from stomach of Captain Jacob (Ravi Kishan) and at the same time Gurtu (Deepak Dobryal) and Ram (Manav Kaul) running towards guest house, the back ground music (Aakash Sagar) and slow motion was quite effective to give proper effect of the scene.

Climax straightly touches your heart and you might feel tears on your cheek. It seems that director Amrit Sagar has lots of potential in story telling as well as technicalities.

And when the film ends, we have little pain in our heart about our forgotten soldiers and their families. And that is the true effect of the film which was lost in Deewar due to concentration on star and typical bollywood formulas. The message straightly pours into our heart because there is no major star cast and so we concentrate on story and characters rather than style of stars. Except Manoj Bajpai; most of the cast is from Sagar brothers’ regular TV serials like Alif Laila, Aankhein and many more in which they were used to give dramatic facial expressions and terrible performances. But here all of them have given honest and good performances. Manoj Bajpai is always good in these types of roles.

There may be some weak points like dramatic performances of Pakistani human rights people; but it should be neglected in front of an honest and brilliant film.

A one of the must watch and criminally neglected movies came out in last 2-3 years. This movie proves that it is not compulsory to have big budget and huge star cast for making a good war movie. Dear Duttas and Sharmas should watch this movie and redefine craft of making a good war related movie.
-Shailesh Limbachiya