Film: Firaaq (Drama)
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Raghubir Yadav, Paresh Rawal, Deepti Naval, Sanjay Suri, Tisca Chopra
Direction: Nandita Das
Duration: 1 hour 41 minutes
Critic's Rating: 3.5/5
When times get bestial, do humans get beastly too? That's the probing question that debutant director Nandita Das poses in this pithy little film that says so much through its power-packed content and portrayals. The film rarely gloats on visuals of violence and death, yet each and every frame forewarns you of the depravity that lies within the human psyche, even as it radiates with a glimmer of hope. Amidst the swirling hate wave in a riot-torn reality, there is an inner core of goodness, whispers Firaaq, gently invoking that sublime spirit that resides within each and every one.
Ostensibly, the film is set against the aftermath of Gujarat 2002 and opens with stark, stomach-churning visuals of a mass grave being dug for the people killed in the riots. The grave-diggers recognise friends, family and neighbours, as they pile up limbs and torsos and explode in rage, threatening to get violent with the dead too. It then shifts focus to the seemingly normal city, where order may have been restored, a few months later, but the polarisation between communities seemed to have just begun. Five parallel stories recreate the trauma of individuals who are desperate to pick up the strings of life once again, only to realise that prejudices, fears, crimes cannot be brushed away or blamed on history.
Young Mohsin spends his days playing truant from the camp where he has been dumped after having lost his entire family. He is desperate to find his father and return home. Silent, suffering and battered wife, Deepti Naval does try and give him refuge by renaming him as Mohan and tending to his wounds. Yet, there isn't much she can do against her abusive, despotic husband (Paresh Rawal) who has played a dubious role in the riots. The upwardly mobile, inter-religious couple, Sameer and Anu (Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra) are ready to flee to a more cosmopolitan Delhi where Sameer may not have to hide his Muslim identity and take on his wife's surname to remain alive. Muneera (Shahana Goswami), the henna girl, returns to her plundered home with her infant and husband and ends up suspecting her best friend for the pillage. But it is the wizened musician Khan Sahib (Naseeruddin Shah) and his whining aide (Raghubir Yadav) who encapsulate the dying of an age of grace and tolerance in their silent lament, even as they embody hope for a new beginning. Khan Sahib berates his faithful retainer for not readying the house for the morning `baithaks' (sittings), where people from all communities would come to sing with him. The people have stopped coming, the music has been silenced and Khan sahib expresses his weary angst: I'm worried not because Hindus and Muslims are killing each other, but because humans are killing each other.
This is an assured debut by Nandita Das, who has already proved her forte as an actor of substance. The film is a balanced, sensitive documentation of contemporary India's most trying times and posits a much-needed plea for sanity, peace and tolerance. The signature frame of the film -- young, orphaned Mohsin-Mohan sitting forlorn beside his bowl in a refugee camp, with a million questions clouding his innocent eyes -- haunts you, long after curtain call.
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