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iVIEW AUTHOR:
FM (Bombay, India)

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Amidst the chaotic, superficial entertaining films, Dharm comes as a refreshing and poignant cinematic experience. It becomes particularly interesting, since it a debut film of a promising filmmaker.

The theme of Dharm is valid in these turbulent times of hatred and intolerance. I recall a an advise by a legendary Hollywood Cinematographer, Andrew Lesnie, to aspiring filmmakers that cinema of our times needs to promote tolerance and forgiveness; and hence, it becomes a cardinal duty of filmmakers of tomorrow to extend this belief through their individual sensibilities.

Bhavna Talwar has succeeded in restoring the belief in her first step with Dharm.

Dharm is a well paced story of a Hindu priest (Pankaj Kapur) who happens to adopt a Muslim child unknowingly at the backdrop of communal disharmony.

The initial part of the film delves with the customary practises of the priest and his interaction to his peripheral world around him: a part which definitely absorbs the audience into the monotony of the priest’s life, at times touching the boundary of purposeful ordinariness.

There were elements of sparks thrown in between the flowing screenplay where groupism of fanatic minds are converging and coming in ways of the priest, who rejects their way of understanding his devout religion.

To break the sameness life of the priest, a child of unknown background is accidentally brought to his pious home by his daughter.

From here, life changes for the priest from a conformist to a sensitive father. His wife (Supriya Pathak) and his daughter show the empathy towards the child, Kartikeye, from the beginning, depicting Lord Krishna’s childhood who got love from His two mothers.

The first casualty of communal hatred is Romi, a daughter of a well-known traditional high rank of Benaras, played by K K Raina. Romi’s choice of selecting a Christian Paul is seen as an anti-religion campaign from the outside world of another religion.

Religious animosity was handled very deftly, defying the regular anticipation of verbal and physical duels, also partly due to budgetary constraints, which is why the death of Paul is a montage of sound and elementary visuals.

The major twist comes when one day the truth of the child gets revealed which shakes the world of the priest. Coming to realise his Kartikeye is Mustafa, the priest undergoes several penance and self inflicted punishment. Yet, redemption from his assumed sin is not achieved.

Despite his profound understanding of his devout religion, it still lacked in giving him the peace from the sin which is considered to be non-forgiving and unacceptable, mainly from the assumed dogmas and societal point of view.

Dharm now becomes a challenge for the priest who is again put in a situation where the same Kartikeye is at his door, asking for his love and mercy.

The self introspection and resultant understanding of a true religion is awakened in the mind of the priest. The true religion is Humanity, which is the essence of all religious texts. A recitation of Kabir’s dohas sums up the theme of the film, where one needs to question the real practise of one’s religion since we all come from the One source.

The rescue of Kartikeye from the swords of fanatics draws similarity to the redemption of the priest and his understanding of the true basis of a religion.

Performance by Pankaj Kapur is startling, maintaining his dignity and carrying arrogance due to his awareness of religious knowledge; he continued to carry his monotonous body and verbal language adroitly, despite undergoing shame and penance, which could have broken oneself from inside and outside. He does become a cliché when he calls for Kartikeye at the gutted house in a voice which didn’t come across as an outcome of sheer fondness and without any shame. The peripheral actors were apt in their roles.

Cinematography by Nalla Muthu captures Benaras in unique ways. Exterior shots are par excellence, however indoors couldn’t scale up to like its exterior counterparts. However, some repetitive exterior locales were consciously unappealing. Art direction was apt and editing maintained the rhythm and pace of the screenplay. Background score and song were very traditional and reflected pureness. What lacked in the screenplay was the final journey of the theme.

In terms of film craft, the closeness between the child and priest needed more profoundness and intimacy. The growth of priest’s fondness for the child comes quite rapidly, to some extent it undermines the affection which forms the basis of looking at one’s belief in a truer sense.

The finale was not very convincing and seems contrived beyond cinematic liberty.

The penultimate scene where Pankaj Kapur walks by the mayhem caused by fanatics seems to be similar to Ashoka’s realization of non righteousness after the war. Suddenly, a bunch of fanatics loses their inertia of killing upon hearing sholakas which represents true spirit of religion seems exaggerated.

At the end, I wish to send heartiest congrats to Bhavna Talwar and her team in giving us an honest, inspiring film.

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