"Tute hue log bolte nahi, unhe suna jaata hai."
The movie was just starting when I walked into the theatre today to watch the Kashmir Files. As soon as I saw the opening scene, I was convinced that I was going to watch the true story of the Kashmiri Hindu genocide.
Vivek Agnihotri's past two undertakings, the Tashkent Files and Buddha in a Traffic Jam, were both good films, but if I had one gripe with them, it was their tone. With characters constantly screaming at the top of their lungs, backed by an overwhelming background score, they felt like they were forcing the audience to feel something. Not this movie. Eerie silence accompanied every dramatic moment, punctuated only by the raw sound within the scene. Every loud gunshot and every hollow thump of another corpse hitting the ground had people jumping in their seats.
There was no attempt to sanitize the truth or hide the horror of the events that happened in the valley during those fateful times. The fragile insecurities of Islamists and leftists were given no credence whatsoever, and this sort of unapologetic pointing of fingers is exactly the need of the hour. The time to be diplomatic has passed. The world has to know exactly who perpetrated these atrocities and why.
In terms of the acting, I honestly have no complaints. Mandlekar as Commander Bitta was electrifying every single moment he was on screen. His quiet menace and madness activated a visceral disgust somewhere inside me that I still can't quite shake. Mithun has really come into his own in his golden years, providing a heartfelt and tragic performance of an Indian civil servant tied down by an administration that is complicit with terrorists. Anupam Kher needs no introduction; no one could have given a better performance in his role. It was almost as if he was channelling his own pain as a victim of the Kashmir genocide to get into the skin of his character. Pallavi Joshi excels in the role of the manipulative and calculating Professor Radhika Menon. I'm not sure if I can ever look at her on-screen again without feeling that knot of rage in my gut. Darshan Kumar as Krishna Pandit has given what is possibly his best performance to date as a young man not at peace with his own history and identity.
Supporting characters also brought their practised ease to the screen; one particular scene with a Shivlinga was unexpectedly moving. Their ability to bring gravitas and weight to the most trivial dialogue really serves to bring the film up a notch in terms of quality. The background score is all the more effective because it is sparsely used, consisting mostly of a few heavy tracks and some Kashmiri songs and poems.
Most importantly, I think many will come away from the movie with a well-researched and reasonably accurate understanding of Kashmir's history and cultural value. I left the hall knowing the name of an Islamic tyrant I had never even heard of before today, and I'm sure other viewers have also had their own epiphanies. In conclusion, this film is a must-watch. Even if you don't have the stomach for gore, which this movie does not shy away from, I would encourage you to face that fear. This movie was never meant to be a comfortable watch. It is made so that you squirm in your seat, so that you avoid meeting the eyes of other people as you file out of the file, so you keep thinking about it for hours whenever you have a moment to spare. Genocide is a tragic and uncomfortable event, but that is all the more a reason why it should not be forgotten.
When Krishna speaks, it almost feels like he is speaking not to the crowd in the scene but the crowd watching him in the halls:
"Aaj hum dekhenge. Aaj hum sab dekhenge."