One of the best things about my current address is the fact that the only multiplex mall in the town is just across the road! This has dramatically increased the number of movies we have watched in a hall, recently, as the hall has been just a walk away. Watching movies has been my (and our, after 2016) "thing". However, going out to watch a movie has not really appealed to me. The best of recliner chairs cannot rival a bed, no cinema cafe can match the variety and convenience of own kitchen, and one cannot just pause the giant screen to check that important whatsapp! In the era of OTT screenings, it is much harder to find a valid reason to visit a movie hall. May be some opulent movies deserve the grandeur of a large screen - like Bahubali, or the much awaited RRR. Then, there are some movies that do not release on OTT at the time you want to watch them.
The Kashmir Files was one such movie. One usually comes across movies these days through their top heavy marketing campaigns. This movie was in news when a marketing partner declined to showcase the movie, maybe finding it too hot to handle. Although, I am left wondering how could India's version of Schindler's List have been promoted on a show comprising of slapstick and (literally) Dad jokes. Still, that is how the buzz was generated on Facebook - how a genuine documentation of a genocide was deplatformed, and how it was our "patriotic duty" to watch and promote the movie ourselves.
What unfolded onscreen was the truth. The bare naked ugly truth. Not that the things shown in the movie were 'secret'. The events shown unfolded in the early years of our lives, and significant parts of those are still recalled by me, as snippets of adult conversation and news. So it should be even better etched on the minds of those who were adults at the time. Still, as a society, those memories have largely been repressed by us. Recently, the whole horrid drama was brought out again in Rahul Pandita's moving autobiography, Our Moon has Blood Clots. Books, by themselves, however, have a limited reach. Their adaptation into movies make them available to the masses. However, Shikara, which was claimed to be an adaptation of Pandita's book (but was in fact a new fictional screenplay written by the same author), was a travesty as far as the narrative was concerned. It was mainly a love story of a couple set in the times of the exodus and later. The worst part, though, was the subtle justification of the communal violence that was meted out to the displaced community.
This movie does not justify anything. It does not mince its words. It does not filter anything out - it rather revels in the blood and gore of it. So it is not for the squeamish. It also has a hefty runtime a little short of 3 hours - a runtime of little joy on-screen. Hence watching it is not a task to be taken lightly. However, the movie is not dull for a moment, except for a monologue by the protagonist just before the climax - and even that monologue is quite informative.
The movie starts dark, and ends dark. The characters shown are not ordinary being. There is a Divisional Commissioner, and the Director General of Police, both of them friends with the protagonist family, and both equally helpless to do anything. When mobs of women picket the ration shop to stop the KP women from getting food, all the Commissioner sahab can do is to tear a notice issued by the terrorists. When Air Force Officers are gunned down, the PAC jawans simply cower behind their sandbags. When the protagonist's family is besieged and his father gunned down (after a seemingly fast friend betrays the fact that he is hiding in the grain bin, by silently pouring grains from his hands while gesturing towards the terrorists - a particularly ominous and haunting scene), the PAC team again cowers down, and when a livid DGP asks them about it, they clearly state that the orders of the terrorist area commander override his orders!
There are many reviews that state that the narrative shown is "not true". If we delve deep into it, the "untruth" is a matter of details. The characters are "fictional" - yes. Villainous deeds of a number of terrorist overlords have been combined into one solitary character, yes. One review goes to the heights of nitpicking that it points out that the wife of the person, who was riddled with bullets in a grain bin, was not sawn in half, nor was his family shot in Nadimarg massacre. Give us a break! Was a man riddled with automatic fire while hiding in a grain bin - Yes. Was a women sawn in half, while alive, like a log, on a sawmill - Yes! Were people shot point blank next to their own graves - Yes. Were Air Force officers shot dead on the road - Yes. Was a Judge of the High Court, no less, killed violently - Yes. All the scenes shown in the movie - including the most horrifying ones, are truth as to their happening, and as to the ethnic classification of the perpetrators and the victims. Individual names on either side are mostly fictional, touche!
Some have faulted the movie for being a propaganda piece. I found it was not so. The character of Professor Radhika Menon, played superbly by Pallavi Joshi, is one of the most convincing in the role of the pro-separatist University professor. In a propaganda movie, the characters voicing the contrary opinion are usually caricatured one dimensional beings. Prof Menon is a very well worked out character, and watching scenes with her makes one really doubt the gruesome scenes one has seen oneself just minutes ago! So no. While the movie may serve as propaganda, it is not a 'propaganda piece' but a well worked out movie. Then again, some have faulted the undiluted senseless violence shown in the movie. It is true, but the same is true of Schindler's List. To satisfy these detractors, either some of the violence meted out in reality would have be hidden, or part of it would have to be justified, as in Shikara. Either course would have been a travesty.
To conclude, I think this is one movie where the reviews of the mainstream media and the word of mouth review on social media are so divergent! The funny thing is, the word of mouth is winning. In a movie hall where I have seen barely ten persons even in the evening shows of "highly acclaimed" movies, I saw the hall almost full in a show starting at 1045 in the night! All spellbound for all of the three hours - and shocked to the core. It is definitely a movie worth watching.
