19 Years Of Manoj Bajapayee’s War Film 1971

War films are hard to make. More so in India where budgets are often as constrained as the director’s vision. Director Amrit Sagar manages to make 1971 look filled -out and believable, not just at the centre but also at the edges. The snowy Manali backdrop where the six protagonists negotiate a lethal game of cross-border politics, helps to keep the proceedings above the mound of mundane that’s often the fate of politically-driven movies.

Though the immediate impulse is to look at this fidgety-fingered flick as a didactic bhai-bhai cross-border drama, Sagar and his crew, specially Chirantan Das behind the compelling camera and Piyush Mishra in front with the energy-driven often flippant-at-top-but-profound-beneath dialogues, bring a quality of rhythmic ruggedness to the narrative. Unlike that other star-studded POW drama Deewar: Let’s Bring Our Heroes Home where the characters seemed larger than strife, here the characters constantly seem to be in sync with the drama. The bonding among the six protagonists is admirably high-octane. None of the actors in this all-boys’ drama plays that self-defeating game of one-upmanship. Each character jumps out of the screen with virile fidelity, creating breathing spaces within the crowded yet compact canvas in a way that makes the narrative gripping and thought-provoking. Ravi Kishan with his large accusin

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eyes offsets Manoj Bajpai’s studied intensity. It’s good to see Bajpai back in form after a while. He imparts a sense of imminent tension to the proceedings. The rest of the cast is also effective, and not just because they are not over-exposed faces, but because they signify in their performances, a smooth synthesis of history and entertainment. In recreating a rather poignant slice of Indo-Pak history as an adventure saga the Sagars seem to have got their act right. A commendable tension is created out of a situation that could have lapsed into unnecessary didacticism. 1971 is a war film where the battle is often fought in places that aren’t immediately visible to the eye.

(THE WRITER IS A VETERAN FILM CRITIC)