JP Dutta’s Paltan out in UAE today
Bollywood war movie veteran JP Dutta on how he assembled his team for ‘Paltan’, out in the UAE today, about a 1967 operation that redefined Indo-Chinese relationship
Bollywood director JP Dutta, whose body of work is dominated by war films, believes firmly in cinema’s transformative powers. By bringing untold stories of armed conflict and destruction, the director behind Border and LOC Kargil which centred on India-Pakistan combats, hopes to awaken the pacifist in us.
“My intention with a war film is to immortalise my country men and our armed forces. Their sacrifices should be immortalised through the medium of cinema… Through my films,” said Dutta in an interview with tabloid!.
The history graduate hopes that he would be able to cement American director DW Griffith’s vision.
“He was a filmmaker who taught us the grammar of cinema… He had predicted that movies would have shown that armed conflicts would disappear from the face of this earth. I want to make his vision come true in a small way through my films. Cinema can influence and make sure that there is no armed conflict,” said Dutta.
His catalyst for brokering world peace? Paltan, his latest film, out in the UAE today, which concludes his trilogy of war sagas. The first two instalments from Dutta’s arsenal were Border (1997) and LOC Kargil (2013).
Led by a motley crew, including Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Harshvardhan Rane, Gurmeet Choudhry, Siddhanth Kapoor and Luv Sinha, Paltan focuses on an obscure chapter in Indian history: the 1967 Nathu La and Cho La clashes along the Sikkim border after the 1962 Sino-Indian war.
We spoke to the actors, who play soldiers in the line of duty, to get to the bottom of the story: