Subhash K Jha speaks about Shaurya 
By Subhash K. Jha, April 5, 2008 - 13:41 IST
It takes vision and valor to make a film about valor and the plummeting morale of the Indian army. Shaurya is about the Indian army. But it isn't a war film. The battles are all fought in the conflicted karmbhoomiof the individual's conscience.
It's a film about the colors of the conscience. But it doesn't get preachy or, God forbid, screechy in telling us the state of the nation as it is.
It's a film about the Indian Muslim's identity. But it steers miraculously clear of taking sides or becoming hysterically passionate on the subject. There have been significant films on the isolation of the Indian Muslim as seen through the eyes of a persecuted individual. I can immediately think of John Matthan's Sarfarosh and Raj Kumar Santoshi's Khakee. In Shaurya Deepak Dobriyal as Javed Khan the Muslim army-man accused of terrorist activities reminds you of Atul Kulkarni in Khakee. There's even that predictably positioned poignant-by-demand sequence where the accused's mother comes visiting the lawyer's home in the 'dread' of the night. Seema Biswas' cameo as Javed's mother is surprisingly lackluster. The lady demonstrates unnecessary restrain where a more dramatic pitch for the distraught mother would have carried the theme of persecution and isolation further.
Samar Khan seems exceptionally shy of emotional display. The relationships that grow within Joydeep Sarkar's intricately- plotted courtroom drama seek solace in silences rather than dramatics. Even the relationship that grows between the frivolous-going-on-troubled hero Major Siddhanth Chowdhary (Rahul Bose) and the doughty journalist (Minissha Lamba) resonates with restrain rather than rhetorical rain clouds. The buddies, Bose and Javed Jaffrey, we are told, are inseparable. However, that level of camaraderie isn't evident in the material on display. The cloudbursts are saved up for the entire climactic interlude. The last 45 minutes are so stunningly honest and so brutally free of polished preening, you wonder if the dormant spirit of the rest of the narrative was meant to beguile us into a misleading state of numbness.
The wake-up call at how a certain section of the government-sponsored agencies look upon the Indian Muslim is hurled into our face with a ferocity venom and impact that leaves us in a state of stunned incredulity. Credit must go to the writer, director and the dialogue writer (Aparna Malhotra) for telling it like it is about the alienation of a community. More than Rahul Bose who's remarkably in-sync and uniformly vibrant in his laughs-to-glitches character, it's Kay Kay Menon as the biased army officer who imbues a compelling credibility to Samar Khan's honorable and brave intentions. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that Shaurya and its theme of the Indian Muslim's self-worth would not have worked without Menon's vital presence. In the courtroom when he spews shocking venom against the community for 'polluting and poisoning', the country Menon sounds frighteningly 'Hitlerian'. The Nazi parallels emerge from the theme with ratifying intensity. Again, we must stress the fact that the director doesn't try to get fashionably polemical in addressing the sensitive issue of communal angst. Most of the way Samar Khan remains non-judgmental in his treatment of the characters and their blemishes. The trial-and-error of the silently smoldering Muslim is punctuated by bout of humor between Bose and his screen-friend Javed Jaffrey who as we all know after years of film watching, will cross moral swords in the narration's onward pilgrimage to self-realization.
From its opening titles, when on a wet, windy, slippery, and deceitful army's night out in Srinagar when Javed Khan pulls the trigger on his senior. To the stunning finale when Shah Rukh Khan's voice recites poignant poetry defining valor and courage not as we see it but as the conscience knows it, Shaurya reveals sparks of master storytelling and a penchant for not hiding away from uncomfortable truths. The director could have easily avoided the limp pockets in the narrative, those telltale breathers when the friends bond, lovers sing and the fringe characters try to get a face from the edges.
Forget the humbug. Just watch Shaurya for its compelling and positively gripping insight into the heart and mind of the average Indian who hides his subconscious biases in the garb of a fashionable liberalism. The film's army backdrop is authentically captured by Carlos Catalan's panoramic cinematography, which captures the feelings and failings of the characters as fluently as the cascading tranquility of the Srinagar backdrop.
The music is weak and not quite what we expect. But who's listening?
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Shah Rukh recites poetry for Shourya
