Sarzameen Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
When the first few words of a Hindi language film are,
“Kashmir dil hai Hindustan ka, aur har Hindustani ki dhadkan.”
It gives me pause. Kahaaniyan nikaal toh letey hain Kashmir se, kehte kaise hain lekin Hindi cinema mein aajkal, yeh dicey hain. Toh aao lets get into it.
Toh film shuru hoti hai ek voiceover se about a mysterious terrorist joh supposedly iklauta hai the root of all unrest in the Kashmir valley. Ugghhh.
The Indian Army is on this guy’s trail, specifically Captain Vijay Menon played by Prithviraj Sukumaran. Kaafi stereotypical beats bar bajta hua yeh drum iss moment tak ley aata hai kahaani ko ki iss atankwaadi Mohsin se Vijay Menon ko ab personal khatra ho sakta hai bataaur a dedicated army man.
Buried underneath the tired tropes of the first act, is a slight note of sadness as well, one can detect sympathy for civilians who have no choice but to be used as metaphorical and literal shields between the two sides. To develop more on the human cost of conflict, we meet Vijay Menon’s family — a wife, Meher, played by Kajol in a refreshingly age-appropriate pairing, and their child, Harman. In contrast to his father’s bravado and national love, Harman is a shy, introverted kid with a speech disorder. Young Harman grows up to become Ibrahim Ali Khan, who may or may not hate his absentee and ashamed father enough to collude with these enemies. However, while one may try to get to know these characters and the unique circumstances they live under, lines of dialogue like “Sarzameen ki salaamati se badhkar mere liye kuch nahi hai” work overtime to remind you that this infact is a Bollywood film.
Sarzameen attempts to answer one question above else- which love is bigger, nation or family, and would you sacrifice the safety of one for the other? Most stories of people in conflict areas centre around this- what is nationalism after all and when does the price of war become too high to bear? First-time feature director Kayoze Irani with his writers Soumil Shukla and Arun Singh however seem too timid to touch that raw nerve, circling around broad-stroke ‘terror attack threat during a public event’ sub-plots instead. A major’s convoy is on the way, a message is received, the motorcade is going to be attacked, the hero reaches just in time to thwart, a car tumbles down a snowy ravine. If you can picture this sequence in your head as I say it, it’s because you’ve seen this play out shot by shot many a time.
Despite Sarzameen’s attempt to tell a not-so-hypernational, rather a humane story about Kashmir and its people, the treatment largely is an amalgam of notes taken FROM the films it doesn’t want to be. The result is a neither-here-nor-there nor there tepid melodrama that offers little insight or entertainment. Nor is it rousing enough to be uncomfortable — questions like WHY is there terrorism in the first place? What are the wounds of the people who pick up arms due to lack of options, are teased without being investigated, scenes and sub-plots clumsily stitched together with background music that does most of the heavy lifting in this film.
Ibrahim Ali Khan is Harman. His casting could’ve been such a win: a young actor with a speech difficulty playing a character who stutters is rare and valuable representation for the disability, especially when coming from a good-looking and privileged leading man. However, the stutter vanishes after one monologue about being brave and strong. Harman reclaims his agency but only once he is “cured”.
Ibrahim, in his second outing, comes across as a better actor than Nadaniyaan permitted him to be. The young man channels rage and aggression convincingly, and in a film, was more convincing of itself, might even have been able to rise above the estranged son returns archetype. Despite the effort, he is no Hrithik Roshan, and this is no Mission Kashmir.
In some of the more emotionally heightened moments in Sarzameen, you’re reminded of how great of an actor Kajol is. Easily overshadowing all other performers in the frame with her, including Prithviraj Sukumaran, Kajol as a hurt and bleeding mother, skilfully diverts one’s attention away from the film’s shortcomings like the many clunky green screen action pieces. In her performance, one can ACTUALLY perceive the depth of heartbreak and tension, that the rest of the film is insistent on hitting you over the head with.
Sarzameen marks the directorial debut of Kayoze Irani, the same year his father, Boman Irani made his own. Similar to Mehta Boys, Sarzameen also wants to talk about a boy and his father, both caught in their battles, unable to connect with each other. But unlike Mehta Boys, Sarzameen doesn’t have the easy out of relying on character quirks to relay its message; this film required a firmer grip on the depth of the conflict its set within. If you’re telling a story about how lives are shaped and shattered in a militarised zone, big moments and important-sounding lines have to be underscored by an elegant understanding of the issue, and not Sonu Nigam alaaps that appear out of nowhere.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10 Sarzameen is, 1 more film where you wonder if Mihir Ahuja had played the main role instead of the support cast, how much of a difference that would have made.
