The authorities and the media have come up with fancy nomenclature for these things - serial blasts, synchronized bombings, simultaneous bomb blast, etc. but they fail to call it the one thing it is - the willfull violoation of the fundamental right of a human being to live - not by the terrorists, but by the Government of India and the people of India.
For that is what it boils down to. When a succession of corrupt, senile, obese and spineless parties take power at the center with no cogent policies to tackle the terror threat, no mechanism in place to protect the lives of the people and with not even a pair of sponge balls to deal with the terrorists and the the instigating countries, that is what you'll get.
And why are you and me as culpable as those eunuchs at the center? Because we voted for them - atleast those of us who "exist" as per the voters' lists, and those of us not lazy enough not to get off our sorry behinds and go to the polling booths. And we forgot about the countless lives lost, the myriad dreams crushed, the thousand gentle smiles plucked off the faces of innocent children. And we continue to forget. And we'll keep forgetting until it happens to us. And then, time will heal that personal wound also, and we'll rest easy in our collective amnesia. Our nation's very own clinical disorder - advanced parkinson's syndrome - we all suffer from it.
There's also another reason why we forget, and why our government is happy with the status quo. Anything in copious quantity becomes commonplace. Mind numbing ads that tell you to use this soap or that shampoo, characterless cars that all but look alike save for the marquee, the everyday grind of life, and the certain knowledge that the human brain cannot deal with the recurring sadness of terror strikes. Terror strikes that have become the cover story of every tabloid and fodder for every news network that runs a breaking story about one on the big screen and a simultaneous scrolling marquee about Kareena Kapoor's latest zero size dress on the bottom. Our forgetfulness is not of the sensational, it is of the mundane.
Every man, woman and child alive and calling himself an American knows about "9/11" and mourns for the innocent lives lost. As they should. Every person with access to a television or a radio or the newspapers or well informed friends across the globe knows about it, and sympathizes with Americans. As they, ofcourse should. Why? Because it happened once, and for all of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld crimes, for all of its pseudo imperialistic expansions accross the globe, and with all the Al-Qaedas and Talibasn and Hezzbollahs and Hamases of the world, it will never happen again. American lives hold some meaning to the American people, and those elected to office understand the moral responsibility of protecting them. Not so in our sad little poser of a country that sends a lunar orbitter up, but is too docile to hang Afsal Guru.
But, what if there was one man who fought back? What if this one man decided that enough is enough and deal with the terrorists himself? Because he knew that his people are numbed and that his government is quadraplegic when it comes to dealing with terror. That is the subject of "A Wednesday" and "Unnai Pol Oruvan" (remake of the former). Our very own Tiananmen Square Tank Man, alas only a celluloid version.
I am not going to discuss the plot here as it will take the fun out of watching the movie. Both are superlative efforts with the message being clear. The interplay between protagonist 1 and protagonist 2 in that order, Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher in the Hindi version and Kamal Hassan and Mohan Lal in the Tamil one is fantastic. All four are very gifted actors and more importantly, exponenets of acting and not overacting. The emotion Naseeruddin Shah and Kamal display when they talk about the tragedy they witnessed, or their frustration with our goverment are real. Because they are Indians they can associate with them. That makes the roles of Anupam Kher and Mohan Lal all the more difficult, because they have to be a foil to a man with strong emotions and an even stronger agenda. They have to play the "bad" guy who is only so because the law of the land is bad. And they have to be seen to be more emotionally stable than their nemeses which restricts their exploration of the emotions associated with those characters. I think in that respect Mohan Lal did a better job at playing the frustrated police man. Much as a fan I am of Kamal Hassan, he blew my mind away when that single tear fell out of his eye while describing the young girl who had been unprintablelized. Naseeruddin Shah also displayed superlative acting skills, especially when his voice quavered as he spoke about that boy who died in the train blast. Top notch job by the leads.
What about the extras? The lazy policeman, the young and eager officers, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra and the secretary to the CM of Tamil Nadu were all played by actors who knew their parts and did just enough to make the whole thing look polished. They never came out of the woodwork, but were always part of the notching that gave it its oaken glory.
This movie is dark with its sepia filtered lenswork, intense music, urgent scenes and subdued acting. It is almost as though the people involved in all areas of the production to let their emotions on the subject flow and then make what comes out of it. It is also very visually appealing. The "war room" at police headquarters, for instance is state of the art and beautifully laid out - functional and modern. As are Kamal or Shah's control center with their modems, routers and cellphones all hooked up to a single laptop. And I have to digress here to point out that in scenes like these, the movies give the audience its due. For example, in the movie 1977 starring Sarath Kumar, a similar state of the art computer not unlike the multi-touch one seen in Minority report is shown. Sarath downloads "secret" files, and a dialog box pops up with these idiotic words: "Downloading Secret Files." I mean to say, which operating system in the world will tell you that a file is "secret" when you are downloading it? Sorry for the interlude... back to shop.
The Tamil version one-upped the Hindi version when it came to explaining the background stuff. For example, its not clear how Naseeruddin Shah had the technical knowhow to mask his cellphone traces so artfully, but there is a reference to Kamal hassan being a communications expert in the Tamil version. Secondly, Kamal is shown during the opening credits to be making the bombs with easily available materials and tools, which is a lot more convincing than Naseeruddin Shah just planting them at different locations. And the scene when the computer geek and policeman change their minds out of new-found respect for the "common man" has better dialogues and clearer motivation for their actions than the Hindi version. But then, same diff.
Unfortunately, there is one area where the movie failed. You see, there is a face to terror, and there is a religion to terror. International terror today is largely delivered by Muslims. Islam is not to blame, and millions of muslims are not to blame, but the fundamental elements of that faith are to blame. True that in a country like India, there are localized pockets of violence like Hindutva groups and Naxalites, but terror in India, especially that associated with coordinated bombings is conducted by muslims. The movie takes the safe route that world governments take and refuses to put a face on the terror. This is my personal opinion, and probably not one I would shout out in public. I mean no offense to my muslim readers (I hope there are some), but facts have to be faced. And its no reflection on Islam, or its diaspora that a few crazed zealots have taken up arms against humanity in a filthy Jihad.
I really enjoyed both the movies because not only did they have strong messages to deliver, but also because they have done their part to elevate the quality of the bilge that is spewing out of Bollywood and Kollywood. They respect the audience's intelligence, they do not pander to anyone. There is no glamor in the movies. There are no songs. There is no separate comedy track. There are not fights, no stunts. There isn't any big budget on location shots, no helicopter camera angles. No gaudy costumes. Everything about them is commonplace, yet they are both rare masterpieces.
The climax was one of the most memorable I have ever seen in an Indian movie - almost like Heat or the new Star Trek movie where the protagonist and antagonist have played a riveting zero sum game throughout the whole affair, but meet face to face just once... at the end. That is ultimately, the nub of the issue. The faceless mass of the proletariat condenses into one angry man. His plan culminates in one final confrontation with his nemesis. We as a people have been made to live in fear by the terrorists, not knowing if we will live or die when we go to work, or go to the shop tomorrow. We are in a constant battle with that nameless, faceless nemesis - the terrorist, but his face becomes his handiwork when at that one moment, we see the explosion or feel the bullet that sends us to our maker. Shouldn't the terrorist be afforded the same courtesy?
