Starring: Rajkumar Yadav,Tigmanshu Dhulia,K K Menon
Director: Hansal Mehta
Producer: Anurag Kashyap,Siddharth Roy Kapur,Ronnie Screwval
Banner: UTV Motion Pictures
Music: Karan Kulkarni
Stop right here. "Shahid" is the sort of
rare raw unnerving journey into a socio-political reality that our
cinema needs to undertake regularly but seldom does. Our filmmakers
largely veer away from doing films whose redolent realism could ruffle
political feathers.
First and foremost, Hansal Mehta’s film on the real-life slain lawyer Shahid Azmi is a fearless work.
Fearless and unfettered, Mehta wastes no
time in establishing the monstrous marginalization of the Muslim
community in a society where terrorism has blurred the majority
community’s sense of propriety to the extent of unmitigated bigotry.
"Shahid" is an exposition on abject
isolation. There is a harrowing sequence of police brutality in the film
where the film’s Muslim lawyer-hero sits on the hard floor of a police
station stark naked shivering as the cop repeatedly accuses Shahid of
terror activities. The protagonist’s absolute humiliation at that point
in the narration hits us where it hurts the most.
Predominantly "Shahid" is about an
impatient society anxieties to find scapegoats for the growing violence
all around us. In a language that embraces the complexities pertaining
to the issue of Islamic isolation, Mehta’s film cracks open the code of
that unexplored genre of cinema known as the drama of persecution.
In "Shahid", Mehta chronicles the life
of lawyer Shahid Azmi with the kind of deft clenched directness that one
encounters in the docu-dramas of Costa-Gavras or nearer home, the
searching searing cinema of the uprooted and isolated individual that
Adoor Gopalkrishnan specialises in.
The silence of the night is punctured by
the shrill sound of the phone. Slurred threats are hurled. Taking the
abuse on his chin, the crusading lawyer, played with scintillating
austerity by Rajkumar Yadav, sits stoically at the centre of the debris
of destruction of distrust as he undertakes a jehad to prove the
innocence of the arbitrarily accused.
There are some highly poignant
electrifying courtroom sequences shot with the languorous devastating
dinginess of courtrooms that have killed off all chances of justice for
the damned.
What would those wretched TADA
undertrials, locked up and left to languish for life, have done without
Shahid Azmi to fight for their lives?
Now I ask you, what would Shahid Azmi’s character have been like if was not portrayed by the very gifted Rajkumar Yadav?
This brilliant actor, whose forte is
underplaying, imbues Shahid’s role with the kind of tightly-reined
tumult and an unspoken anguish that actors in our cinema seldom get a
chance to put forward in the characters they play. Here is a performance
that deserves a standing ovation, primarily because it doesn’t scream
for attention.
In comparison, the other performances
appear pale and distant, albeit authentic and thoughtful. Tigmanshu
Dhulia is notably powerful in a brief cameo as an eminent lawyer.
Shahid’s relationship with the divorcee
mother is never satisfactorily rounded up nor assimilated into this
courageous man’s fight for justice for those who are condemned not only
by law but by social stigmatization.
What comes across with forceful impact
is the protagonist’s yen for justice. This man who has suffered the
worst humiliation and suffering in custody won’t allow the same shame
and pain for those who are wrongfully confined. This man means business.
We must hear his story.
Of course, he pays with his life.
Whether it’s Romeo or Shahid, all heroes must come to a suitably sticky
end. That’s what you get for trying to be a hero. Sometimes while you
try to be larger than life, life creeps up on you to make its own
outrageous claims.
"Shahid" is a crucial document of our
troubled times. It builds an incredibly gripping case-study of
persecution and vindication. The treatment of the topical subject is
never ponderous or polemical. Mehta has set out to convert the slain
lawyer’s valorous tale into an authentic exposition on the residue of
retribution.
But what to do, if the end-result is so darned gripping?
"Shahid" is a must-see film with an
absolutely impeccable subtext that can be read as an urgent warning
against the politics of isolation practiced by many political parties.
Be warned. You might be voting for violence.
