Firaaq: Cathartic Cinema
The present decade has been the best for Hindi cinema in a long while. Nandita Das’ Firaaq joins the list of outstanding d'©buts made in the period.
Firaaq is a day in the life of Ahmedabad in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage of 2002. An ensemble narrative, Firaaq is peopled with stories that happen to converge on a particular day, of the ones who return from what they presumed was an escape from the violence, and of the ones who prepare to forsake a city that has become unbearably persecutory.
An exploration of a sub-culture of survivors, and a prescribed indictment, Firaaq weaves intertwining tales of victims, mostly, and of their perpetrators;
A young Muslim couple, Muneera (Shahana Goswami) and Hanif (Nawazuddin) returning to their ransacked home obsesses itself with attaching faces to a mob that might’ve gutted their home.
A 6 yrs old boy sheltered in a refugee camp desperately searches for his father.
A Gujarati housewife (Deepti Naval) atoning an all-consuming guilt of having refused sanctuary to a pleading Muslim woman, her husband (Paresh Rawal) who has participated in the pillage, and is now protecting his rapist younger brother.
An inter-faith couple (Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra) that is embarking on a move away from an Ahmedabad that is threatening their fragile co-existence.
An aged musician (Naseeruddin Shah) who’s defeated in his search for strength to endure inevitable hatred for the other, and his man-Friday (Raghuvir Yadav) who’s shielding the musician from the same.
Amongst its accomplishments, Firaaq is an example of superior direction of an inspired cast of performers. Special mention must be made of the youngest members hobnobbing with the stalwarts in the film – Shahana Goswami, Nawazuddin, and Sanjay Suri.
While all these few stories, culled from innumerable other scars, could’ve been independent of each other, Nandita Das and her co-writer Shuchi Kothari make them succinctly inter-dependent, and resultant on each other, in ways that are cathartic and poignant. Collaborative writing is known to be tricky; Firaaq’s writing seems to be as novel as the end result is rewarding – the film was collabo-written by the writers over the Internet Telephony Service Skype. If that’s what sires enlightening cinema, so be it.
As far as the relevance of the film is concerned, I personally feel, as many cinematic articulations of the Gujarat carnage and its aftermath is welcome; to invoke the Mitscherlichs, “there is no moving beyond loss without some experience of mourning.”
Let there be healing, instead of an inability to mourn.
Tags: Firaaq, nandita das, thani
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“as many cinematic articulations of Godhra is welcome”
Plz do mind that it is not about Godhra but the subsequent riots….Godhra was the incident where Karsevaks were burnt alive…somehow no movie shows it…
Not that I am supporting it…but we should be factually correct when talking about sensitive topics…
I agree that Firaaq is a great debut for a director. It’s a touching piece from the heart, and because of that we forgive it anything that may not be perfect about it. I am glad I got to see it here in NYC, unlike Gulaal and Barah Aana which are not even available to us.
@ramen
error regretted. thanks for pointing out :-)
The documentary Final Solution is worth a watch if you’re looking for some real info into 2002 Gujarat Riots
good movie,but i am yet to see a great movie on anti sikh riots and emergency(apart form hazaro kwhaise aisi)
Anurag
Haven’t you heard of AMU? bu Shonali Bose?