About Dhurandhar – an extremely important film for our times!
Let me explain, but first, let’s break it down into two key elements: production and content.
Production
It’s not easy to keep people hooked for 3+ hours! Well, that’s not really true. We are so desperate for an escape from our realities that we’d lap up anything. But to put in sincere effort to make a 3+ hour-long journey engaging and keep people invested in the second instalment—it’s rare for Bollywood these days and deserves credit.
The production has all the makings of a hit: a convincing story and an exciting plot, multiple strong, eccentric characters, familiar issues in a wild and alien setting, deep-rooted and fantastical conflicts, a gripping cliffhanger, and a foolproof thematic hook—nationalism! Not to mention violence (a LOT of it), good music, and sex appeal.
Cinematography, editing, sound, location and set design, costume, casting, and special effects—great effort all around! Dhurandhar has a steady sequence of thrilling events at a followable pace, with no significant low. And amid all the violence p*rn, there are pockets of sober sentiment—for your tribe, nation, child, lover, etc.
The film’s success is well earned.
Content
While the production value of Dhurandhar has earned a league of its own, the genre of jingoistic content has become increasingly popular in India lately. India is getting better at propaganda, but there’s a long road ahead before we catch up with the US and the like. And to attain global credibility, we need to learn how to be subtle.
I mean, plugging government intelligence and defence footage into the narrative of a work of fiction? Come on! Otherwise, the genre of jingoistic—even racist and xenophobic—content is nothing new anywhere in the world. There was a time when it gave people purpose; now it’s needed badly to distract people from matters that matter.
All the CIA and MI6 nonsense with their sexy military lingo—tango, charlie, bring in the rain, asset, classified, etc. Titillating substance to help you forget, even for a second, that you’ll likely never retire, afford a house, that your bills will keep getting more expensive, that your parents will pay for your child, and that you’ll soon lose your job to AI!
Apart from the stupid obviousness, another front on which Dhurandhar lags behind is its failure to adopt the bipartisan nature of Western propaganda. American content, irrespective of who’s in the White House, always puts America first. Dhurandhar, meanwhile, goes about appeasing the current political dispensation while trashing the previous government.
The jackass director didn’t consider how this partisan propaganda would portray India. This also explains how a few thousand Britons plundered India and killed scores of millions over more than 200 years—with the active cooperation of Indians (rabid conservatives). As one of the film’s characters, Sanyal, says, India’s biggest enemy is a section of Indians.
But thank God for content like Dhurandhar, now we are filled with pride and joy and feel a little less powerless! Never mind the government’s failure to clean up the air and our rivers, create jobs, bring down expenses, build essential infrastructure, provide us with a future worth having, and ensure we don’t end up living like Hunger Games tributes.
Today, every nation with rising inequity and injustice and a growing global footprint is seeing more of such content. It helps the 1% amass more wealth and power, while the masses pleasure themselves with worthless nationalistic and sectarian pride, the desire for control (otherwise slipping), and a primitive appetite for violence.
Good stuff, right? Wish I could say the same about the treatment of women in the story. Toeing the line of Indian cinema at large, the female characters of Dhurandhar are really part of the prop budget—beautiful, fragile, and easily impressionable damsels who slap, cry, scream, and are at the mercy of their MEN!
Dhurandhar is quality sasta nasha (easy high) India needs. Hence, an extremely important film for our times!
P.S. It seems Karachi has better roads than Bangalore.
Note:
Any variety of capabilities can fall short when facing an entity that has little to lose. And of course, powerful third parties fuelling the fire to keep their hands warm and control the global balance of power doesn’t help. What also doesn’t help is the marriage of a state—any state—and a religion—any religion. It’s one of those very few things that have no exceptions.
So, to think that your religion is better than someone else’s, or that the best way to tackle a religious state is to give up your secular strengths, is dangerous lunacy. So is not asking why two nations that were born together went very different ways. The answer? Control of religion over the state—again, any religion. So, please care, if only for the sake of your child!
Something to think about.
arguments & agreements 