I saw it last week and thought it was very good. Some loose notes (may contain spoilers):
- I like that there is very little gore in the movie. Riots have been done so often in movies that many of the images have come to be, awful as this may sound, hackneyed. The screaming mobs, the fire, the puddles of blood. Here, she makes a much stronger statement by staying away from that and tackling the aftermath. The quiet devastation wreaked in individual lives has a stronger impact. In the opening scene, the pile of bodies mechanically dumped by a truck (whose driver you can’t see) underlines the dehumanization that takes place during a riot.
- I also liked the scene in which Munira (Shahana Goswami) is gathering up burnt vessels from her kitchen and methodically throwing them out. Her house has been burned and what choice does she have but to clean up? But this simple act of cleaning up, familiar to so many women, now carries so much loss.
- In one scene, a character is killed just when you thought he would be safe. The act of killing is so deliberate and yet so casual, so happenstance in a way. The death almost seems like a grotesque mistake. You want him to step back a few paces, choose a different place to hide, be somewhere else. As if he is an ant and what one is looking at is the simple, un-meditated act of someone stepping on him in error. Except that this is not the case. Firstly, he is not an ant. He is a man who has been made into an ant, forced to fear the boot at every step. And secondly, the boot is actively looking for him. So his chances are nil in any case. He cannot run simply because there is no place to go.
- I think she’s explored well the issue of confinement or the sense of being trapped inside or outside of systems (or in anarchy) not of your making. Confinement takes many forms. Munira has to stay holed up in her friend’s room, unable to go home because the police are outside her home. People must stay indoors during curfew or risk being hunted down by the cops. But more subtly, Sameer (Sanjay Suri) must keep his mouth shut about his surname and hope his first name gets him through. A Hindu housewife (Deepti Naval) must suffer the guilt of letting a Muslim woman die because she couldn’t let her into her house. Mohsin, a Muslim child who’s been orphaned by the riots, must choose between the freedom to look for his parents and the rehab camp.
- The Hindu housewife is also caught between her own conscience which she assuages by burning herself with driblets of oil, and her crude husband’s violence. In multiple scenes, she is shown looking out of the grills of a window, her helplessness and her failure circumscribed by the bars. When she meets Mohsin, he represents a chance at redemption. She gently brings him into the house, lingering at the threshold, easing him in. But he is frightened when he witnesses her husband’s violence and leaves. He would rather flee violence, and the fragile love that he receives is not enough to keep him. Besides, he wants his real parents. Not that easy to replace.
- I like that there was no neat, hopeful message. Mohsin walks into the rehab camp, walks through masses of people. Some children are playing with marbles. They invite him to join them. I cringed wondering if she was going to tie it up with a kitschy picture of kids playing. But he refuses. He walks to a corner and sits down by himself. He is still lost and grieving. And it will take more than a bunch of marbles to distract him. Yes, eventually he will probably move on. But not yet. Not just yet.