The Kashmir Files Review

Plotline: –

After his grandfather’s (Anupam Kher) death, Krishna Pandit (Darshan Kumar) visits retired IAS officer Brahma Dutt (Mithun Chakraborty) in Srinagar to fulfil the late man’s wish of having his ashes dispersed in their ancestral house in presence of his friends. This begins a series of collections and recollections for Krishna through his hosts and his co-guests as he sets off to uncover his roots and how his community was deracinated from the same, all the while struggling to bring in line the truth he finds out with what he has been taught, or not taught, in his university.

Positive Points: –

• The no holds barred approach of storytelling.
• The performances of each actor irrespective of the time and space he/she gets.
• Rohit Sharma’s nerve-wracking score.
• Vivek Agnihotri and Saurabh Pandey’s screenplay that uses the non-linear narrative quite intelligently and resists genre cliches from overwhelming the storyline.
• The film’s accuracy in capturing how effectively the intellectual system of the country brainwashes the youth with astute play of words revolving around hope and despair.

Negative Points: –

• Shoddy VFX and SFX.
• The visceral depiction of gore and violence is not meant for the faint-hearted.
• A few unclean editorial cuts which I could not justify on cinematic grounds.

My Take: –

I prefer keeping my blog apolitical as I believe political connotations only hamper the perception of a film’s storytelling. Politics is barely understood by most people irrespective of the variance in age groups. Social media is rife with viewpoints that often hold no water on pragmatic terms but are popular because they either give a sense of superiority or a necessity of a revolution that instils a purpose in your otherwise mundane and inconsequential life. People can go to any extent to enforce these ideas and many a time not even realise when they transgress modesty or even basic common sense. No matter whether facts are twisted, history is whitewashed, or characters are violated, the fallacious sense of greatness always prevails. Political views in modern times are like religious faiths which you dare not counter with harsh truths as it would mean the end of the world for certain people. In a person to person interaction, people have the choice to offend but in socio-politics, it depends on who dominates the narrative. As long as you are in line with the system’s views, all’s well but stray an inch and you’re a part of the problem. For someone who has been following the issue of the final exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir valley for a decade now, I have seen how actively the issue is trampled or trivialised by the intelligentsia of this country because it sticks out like a sore thumb in enforcing the charades of unity and brotherhood in a nation that has seen conflicts in different forms for centuries. So when I tell you that this film is one of the most courageous features ever made in Indian cinema, I am absolutely not joking because I can only contemplate the risks involved in making and promoting the same.

The Kashmir Files does start on flimsy terms. Questionable direction as well as shoddy VFX and SFX is unmissable in its opening few sequences with the latter remaining consistent whenever blood is spilt or a bomb is detonated. However, the direction goes from strength to strength as Agnihotri churns the plot out in an unconstrained fashion unabashed to pull off punches even in areas you wouldn’t expect. The screenplay penned by Agnihotri along with Saurabh Pandey scatters the non-linear story across two different eras and makes comprehensible jumps between different timeframes. The central characters are created as amalgamations of real-life people and the events surrounding them have been picked from actual events that may or may not necessarily involve the said personas or justify the actual timeline. These personas represent discrete entities of the Indian socio-political sphere, such as the common man or the perpetrators or the victims or even the intellectuals. The fusion of multiple identities into a few personas gives the story its necessary character development and the actors ample opportunities to bring out their best. 

Saying that the cast members have done justice to their respective characters will be a gross understatement. Some of them have even lived through their characters compelling the audience to connect with their emotions. I have always believed that a good film has great heroes but a great film has even greater villains and The Kashmir Files has two sets of them – an obvious one who is a cold-hearted murderer played by Chinmay Mandlekar and the other being the friendly one, played by Pallavi Joshi, who can easily get into your heart and mind and persuade you to think only in a certain fashion. Mandlekar imbibes the archetypal ruthlessness that would require to run down an entire community without remorse. His broken English along with his sleek Kashmiri (mind you he is actually a Maharastrian) wouldn’t convince you of his abilities as much as his dead cold stares do. It’s hard to believe that this man who plays the role of a dreaded militant had portrayed Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in other films! Talking about range one cannot resist being in awe of Joshi whose antagonistic roles in her husband’s films kind of hurt those who loved seeing her play positive characters on TV years ago because she nails these crooked personas like a boss! If Mandlekar instils fear in you, Joshi imbues vicious hatred and this she achieves by being amiably assertive. She doesn’t downplay her character because of its social inclination rather pushes you to believe her words and boy is she believable! The movie clearly defines the brain and brawn of the perpetrators with one doing the act and the other doing the planning and cleaning albeit staying far away from contact, ostensibly of course. While the story doesn’t say it overtly, in its overtone it easily pans out as a conspiracy flick and that’s carried ably on the shoulders of the two aforementioned artists who play their most memorable roles on the bigger screen with a criminal level of effortlessness!

Coming to the part of the victims, there are three kinds of victims portrayed in the movie – the direct victims who were violated or killed by the perpetrators, the survivors who were meant to live and spread the horrors and lastly the spectators who were forced to watch it all unfold and were able to do little or zilch about it. The depictions of the first category are in plenty but Bhasha Sumbli’s Sharada stands out more so because she endures all three phases of victimisation. Despite portraying the pain of a specific community, Sumbli embodies the helplessness of womenfolk amidst active genocide quite universally. The agony of losing the ones you love and being violated to save your family while still trying to remain strong because you ought to survive for the people you love, is not an easy thing to do and the actress flames it onto the screen in a heart-rending manner. Mithun Chakraborthy stands for the third class of victims and portrays a personality that carries the guilt of a crime he never commits. Showing restraint for most part of the film, the veteran grips you with a sterling impassioned breakout when his character is bemused with Krishna’s gullibility recounting the spine-chilling montages of dying figures in a genocide. For a second person narrator, Chakraborthy’s rendition is beyond brilliance and his powerful portrayal breaks even through the viewer’s mental shackles. Darshan Kumar’s Krishna Pandit is your common man who is oblivious to the fateful events that define the current lives of his community. He keeps an open mind in order to learn and empathise and like most other youngsters, gets sucked into the devious narratives set by the think tank of the country. Albeit being a Pandit himself, his character belongs more to a miscellaneous category of victims i.e. people who are indoctrinated to believe in only established notions and follow rules that protect those ideas and beliefs straying away from which puts them at risk of socio-political ostracisation. Kumar renders a credible portrayal of a confused youngster who’s unable to connect the stories told by eyewitnesses with the ones echoed by his institution. He doesn’t just play the role of one of the central characters rather emplaces the audience in his shoes because the character he portrays is in many ways the viewer himself/herself who’s also swaying to and fro trying to maintain a balance between conflicting narratives. Being the most credulous entity in the story, Krishna is a rare character that has the potential to become an antagonist but doesn’t (spoiler? Not really!). The build-up to his final speech is as disconcerting as its riveting and Kumar justifies all the development his character goes through with a heartbreaking act which being his best, is saved for the last.

Certain things cannot be explicated by the usage of language. Literature is a powerful tool to convey emotions but not strong enough to convince you as to how powerful Anupam Kher’s performance is in this movie or the kind of sentiments he rakes up within you in his blinder as Pushkar Nath Pandit. If Sumbli, Kumar and Chakraborthy break your heart, Kher sucks the soul out of you! His character is a rare introspection of the male victims of genocide and how terribly even their lives are wrecked by the loss of not just property or people but also of their dignity and how it exacerbates with blatant denial and whitewashing, worse even celebration. The veteran has acted in more than 500 films across industries and this is arguably his finest performance! I cannot fathom a role or character that would make him surpass what he has done here! He has set the bar a bit too high for himself let alone other actors in the industry.

Anyone who has followed Indian cinema, especially the commercial productions knows that films dealing with socio-political issues are narrated as moral lectures. The trend arose from good/great flicks which excelled in filmmaking but have often been followed by mediocre features that squander their promising themes by being too overt in conveying their message. What’s worse is that some films, despite their wonderful storytelling, prefer to eschew using accurate characters in order to stay in line with the popular narratives of the system. Films like Article 15 and Jai Bhim are good examples of this syndrome. How The Kashmir Files has resisted this urge despite catering to a systematically unfavourable theme is perhaps its most underrated trait. It’s impossible to showcase every aspect of a complicated problem in a (nearly) three-hour-long feature and expecting otherwise is mere inanity. Many wouldn’t want to believe it but this Vivek Agnihotri directorial has actually mellowed down a lot of the brutality that precisely happened to the Pandits (and similar other people) in the valley. However, the barbarity that the makers have used as a narrative tool isn’t thrown around callously rather managed judiciously to build characters and pave ways for their sentiments to reach out to the viewers who have to endure a visual shock in order to capture the flow of the storytelling. This is powered by Rohit Sharma’s haunting background score which keeps the tension up on your pulses and plays deftly with the same. A few of what is missed by the technicalities are compensated on its acoustic fronts coaxing the audience to not make the mistake of missing the woods in favour of the trees.

Final Verdict: –

The Kashmir Files could have easily been a wishy-washy feature that would cater to a certain political narrative and given the director’s reputation both as a filmmaker as well as a political observer, most of us expected this to run on the same lines as his previous works or even similar films across industries. But this piece of cinema simply stands out not just as a stellar feature of its genre but of any genre made in this country irrespective of regions and languages. Movies as sensitive as this aren’t made with this level of fervour every day and whatever is made would hardly put you through the angst and pain that The Kashmir Files does. It’s not a film that leaves you with hope for a better tomorrow, it just puts you back through such gruesome grilling that would leave you shattered and broken. It’s a film that you would want to give a standing ovation to upon its conclusion but all you would be able to do would be to either sit glued to your seat in utter silence or just dart out of the theatre gasping for breath. In my case, it did kind of both.

RATING: 4.5/5