An intelligent directorial debut from acclaimed actress Nandita Das…
A world away in tone from Quick Gun Murugan, but also from India (and including a cameo performance by Mr ‘Rice Plate Reddy’ himself Nasser), comes Nandita Das’ impressive debut feature as writer and director.
Set shortly after the Hindu-Muslim riots that tore through Gujurat in 2002, Firaaq tells of interweaving everyday lives affected by the conflict: the Muslim businessman and his Hindu wife who plan moving to Delhi in the aftermath, having lived most of his life in fear that his religion would be found out; the young Muslim family who come out of hiding to find their house burnt down, the wife finds herself suspecting her oldest friend of betrayal, while the husband looks for revenge; the ageing musician, who find no one comes to his performances any more; the abused wife, plagued by nightmares of closing her door to a victim of the riots; and the boy searching for his family, not realising he has lost everything as a result of them.
Having made an impressive transition from acclaimed actress to director, Nandita Das debut is a confident and accomplished work. As the stories unfold Das’ focuses on the personal level of the effects of the Gujurat riots, and how ordinary and often seemingly unconnected lives can be touched by them, masterly exploring the relationships between these religions and India itself. Balancing the storylines well, the young Muslim boy starts to interlace several of characters. It’s comparable to films like Paul Haggis’ Crash, though far less cloying. Das and co-writer Shuchi Kothari’s intelligent script avoids hysteria and melodrama though it pulls no punches when required, yet it can’t help but occasionally come across as moralistic in tone.
As Das herself revealed in a short Q&A film following one of the showings, she wanted to show how we are all affected by such events, and how much it galvanizes opinion from even the most seemingly liberal-minded. The films title, Firaaq, means both separation and quest, which Das felt was appropriate.
It was interesting to note, as if to underline her own motivations for making the film, that some members of the audience – who obviously knew much more about the situation and took it far more personally – seemed to want her to make a more judgmental work, to point the finger of blame at one community or another. That, of course, was not the point, but rather to bring home these tragedies that are committed in religions name. If the film is political, she said, it is to bring an end to the senseless vicious circle of violence.
Das revealed that the boy character Mosian was particularly difficult to cast. Having seen young Bollywood stars in auditions, she took the search to local schools in Hyperabad. In fact, the boy was one of the first she saw. Initially continuing the search in the area she kept coming back to his haunting eyes. Proclaiming him something of a ‘pro’ by the end of filming, this is one hell of a debut for the young actor.
Firaaq is a powerful and thought provoking and worthy film with a fine ensemble cast, utterly deserving of a wider audience both in India and in the UK and beyond.
Firaaq was shown as part of the London Film Festival with director Nandita Das in attendance, and is due to be released in India in January 2009.
