Partially riveting
‘PARTITION: 1947’
Director: Gurinder Chadha; Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi, Om Puri, Michael Gambon, Neeraj Kabi, Denzil Smith, Tanveer Ghani, Simon Callow and Lily Travers; Rating:
The curtain rises to show the arrival of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of the India, who has been assigned the duty to grant independence to India. Accompanied by his wife and daughter, he tries to win the hearts of the country dwellers through compassion and love. But soon enough, he realizes that it would be difficult to execute even a well thought plan since the country has an immensely internally divided population.
Gurinder Chadha (the director), whose own family has been the victim of the consequences of partition, is attempting to bring forth the emotional facade of the sufferers while simultaneously trying to give an overview of the political scenarios. The conflict induced by the Britishers among the Indians, in the name of religion, is taken as the focal point to show how actually things took place back then.
Partition: 1947, though depicting the horror of partition, is predominantly a beautifully weaved love story between Aliya (Huma Qureshi), a Muslim and helping hand to Viceroy’s daughter and Jeet (Manish Dayal), a Punjabi Hindu who is Mountbatten’s personal assistant. In the wake of portraying the love bond, Gurinder fails to give a detailed account of some relevant incidences that were actually the cause of breaking country into parts.
However, the documentary footages - giving a glance of the scenario during partition, the conversation between Jinnah and Mountbatten, Gandhi suggesting a mid way to avoid partition, clash of opinion between Jawaharlal Nehru and Karamchand Gandhi, Mountbatten being used by his own people as the play card to get hold of the oil refineries - amazingly throw light on the lesser known facts about this historical event.
Om Puri, as the father of Aliya and a die-hard Gandhi supporter, adds weight to the movie. Also, the performance of Hugh Bonneville (as Lord Mountbatten), Gillian Anderson (as Lady Edwina Mountbatten) and Lily Travers (as Lady Pamela Mountbatten), daughter of the Viceroy, is worth the appreciation.
In an attempt to create a balance by giving equal footage to the opinion of both the parties; the ones favouring the formation of Pakistan for the Muslim minorities and the ones against it, the movie could not justify such a sensitive event. During the first half, you will actually feel like dozing off while the second half contradictorily seems to be in a rush to reach the climax. The facts shown through the movie could have been shown in a more engaging manner because 106 minutes is not a sufficient span to talk about the pre and post-partition India.
As far as the cinematography is concerned, the scenes within the castle are beautifully shot to give you an insight of how things used to function at the time.
The background score of the film will make you fall in love with A.R Rahman all over again. Though the qawwali - Duma Dum mast kalandar has been recreated several times, the music maestro does not fail to give it a distinctive ‘Rahman’ touch.
Partition: 1947 is actually a Hindi dub of the Hollywood movie named ‘Viceroy’s house’. It will be releasing on August 18 in India.