31st October: Undermining history
The date in the title obviously refers to the 1984 tragedy that included the death of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the unforgivable aftermath that saw thousands of hapless, helpless victims from a particular community being brutally slaughtered by a mob emotionally charged and incensed by the assassination.
Harry Sachdeva’s script follows the path of an old couple struggling to get justice for the victims and eventually falling victim to the slow wheels of a system that slowly and steadily defeats the very purpose of its existence.
After returning from yet another fruitless pursuit in the courts Davinder Singh (Vir Das) takes out his scrap book of newspaper cuttings detailing the horrendous events that followed the assassination and riffs through the pages reminiscing about how they and their little ones managed to escape unhurt-while his wife Tejinder Kaur (Soha Ali Khan) looks on despondently.
The flashback takes us through their rudimentary routines on that fateful day and then cuts away to show us a low down view of the assassination and an entirely premeditatedly spliced up version of what transpired thereafter.
Incendiary dialogues are muted, the drama is ineffective, the pace is sedentary and the plotting is pretty much clueless.
You won’t get to feel the panic, fear or intense agony of a community betrayed, here. And that’s because the plot is weak-knit, the script fails to provide any depth of characterization and the tempo is largely flattened out.
The music goes into overblown bursts heralding ominous tidings but it doesn’t touch you. Shivaji Lotan Patil’s helming doesn’t lend the narrative any energy or tension. Even the depiction of mob fury is muted and strayed.
The performances from the largely ensemble cast is ineffectual. Vir Das is hopelessly miscast. All through the narration he wears a grimace and a simper in order to denote his agony and ecstasy while Soha Ali Khan dovetails into melodrama. Clichés and stereotypes crop up in this depiction, quite unwittingly.
The narrative cuts out the blame game and resorts to focusing on the human story but it’s not quite the real thing. This is a forgettable experience and may further trivialize the efforts of a few valiant and untiring souls fighting in the hope that justice delayed may not become justice denied.