DVD Review: Amu 
By Joginder Tuteja, August 29, 2008 - 15:41 IST
MOVIE DETAILS
Cast: Konkona Sen Sharma, Brinda Karat, Ankur Khanna, Yashpal Sharma
Director: Shonali Bose
Producer: Shonali Bose
Music: Nandlal Nayak.
THE FILM
'What's my fault' - cries a Sikh man, a loving husband and a father of two, who has been forced out of his lower middle class slum dwelling by a group of
miscreants and burnt alive. It is this cry, which resonates long after you are through watching a stunning 100 minutes odd dramatic tale by Shonali Bose.
For the uninitiated, this film was completed way back in 2004 when Konkona Sen Sharma was still finding her feet in cine world. However, it is quite apparent
that her current crop of movies isn't really the isolated cases of inherent brilliance which the young woman has been carrying with her ever since she
decided to face the camera. What also amazes is the fact that the film is helmed by a first time director Shonali Bose, a lady in her 40's, who claims to
have been a witness to the 1984 Delhi riots when she was a college student in Delhi University.
It is these very riots that form a wallpaper of 'Amu', which travels much beyond the carnage that destroyed the very virtue of humanity. Of course many of us
who are reading this piece have been brought up in an era post the riots and hence aren't quite cued into what really transpired more than two decades back.
With most part of our knowledge about the massacre being relegated to what we have read in newspapers or magazines, Amu does manage to do well in recapturing
the horrific time period.
However, Amu goes beyond the riots. In fact, the sequences which demonstrated the ugly face of mankind (captured in a heart rendering manner by Bose;
something which would churn the stomach of the most strong hearted of all) do not last more than 15 minutes in the entire duration of the film. Nonetheless,
it is the built up to the sequence of events (which come as an absolute shocker) that creates a paramount tension even as one follows the journey of Konkona,
who is out there to find her real identity.
There is no beating around the bush by Shonali Bose as she sets context within few minutes of the beginning of Amu that Konkona is a woman with a
past. A past about which even she was hitherto unaware about and aims at exploring it further only after visiting the by lanes of Delhi slums. An NRI who is
on a trip to India for the first time to visit her maternal family, she has a chance encounter with a young man (Ankur Khanna) along with whom she sets on a
journey to explore the city of Delhi. It is during one of her visits to the household of a tea stall owner (Yashpal Sharma) that memories from the past (when
she was barely a 3-year-old girl) haunt her and she questions her single mother (Brinda Karat) about her real identity.
An emotional tale about a mother (Brinda), a boyfriend (Ankur), his family (headed by a bureaucrat father), a tea stall owner with a past, an auto rickshaw
driver haunted by the crimes he committed more than two decades back and last but not the least. Countless families which are still left wondering about the
ordeal they had to face for no crime of their own, Amu grips a viewer entirely for those 100 minutes. And it does so without resorting to jingoism or setting
a depressing tone!
Last but not the least, it just falls short of naming the politicians who only pushed away the hapless victims, who ran from pillar to post while their kin
were being murdered in broad daylight. With references like 'Woh Kaale Chashme Waala Neta.....', the narrative doesn't quite leave much to the
imagination of the viewers to figure out the men who are being pointed out as being responsible for the mass murder that shocked the world in 1984.
No wonder, the film was severely censored when it was released for a brief period in India a few years back!
PACKAGING
The film comes in an impressive plastic case 'Special Collector's Edition'
DURATION
The film comes in a single DVD pack with the film's duration being 98 minutes.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Film Maker Commentary
- Making of Amu
- Deleted Scenes
- Festival Q and A
- Reactions: Indian Cinema
- Making of the Film Maker
For those who love their DVDs to be heavily loaded, Amu has quite a lot to offer. In her commentary, Shonali Bose takes a viewer through scene by
scene and explains her reasoning behind what prompted her to make Amu even though history had made sure that the riots of 1984 were supposed to be
dead and buried. However, unlike a mainstream commercial film where filmmakers are heard talking about their shot taking and method behind writing a scene,
Amu sees Shonali provide a logical reasoning behind the presence of a particular scene or sequence.
However, for those who are looking forward to something far more entertaining, there isn't much in store from these special features since segments like
'Festival Q and A' and 'Making of the Filmmaker' are really lengthy which take the sheen away from the proceedings. It starts becoming a little too heavy on
the head as quite a lot of emphasis in paid on what prompted the making of the film and how Shonali went ahead and realized her dream of getting Amu
in celluloid.
Ditto for the segment on reactions by Indian cinema where people associated with the industry appreciate Bose's effort. What must be highlighted though is
that it is an impressive list of names with people like Aamir Khan, Meera Nair, Deepa Mehta, Naseeruddin Shah, Hema Malini, Gulzar, Jaya Bachchan, Vishal
Bhardwaj and many more coming forward in support of the film.
'Making of Amu' is an interesting segment though as it has been shot quite differently in a docu-drama format. Showing some real behind the scenes footage,
it would be quite an interesting exercise to see this segment before watching the film as it makes one really interested in what Amu has in store for
the audience. There are quite a few deleted scenes to be served as well and one must commend the film's editor (Bob Brooks) for having done a commendable job
by bringing a 180 minutes film down to 100 minutes. Though it isn't as if the entire 80 minutes footage makes it to the deleted scenes but what is shown does
showcase how well Brooks applied his editing scissors to make Amu a tout affair!
TECHNICAL DETAILS
- 4X3 Full Screen Presentation
- Subtitles in English
- Languages: English and Hindi
- Dolby Digital 5.1
PRICE
Rs. 399/=
CONCLUSION
The strength of Amu lies in the fact that it neither aims to sensationalize the tragedy of 1984 nor does it try to make a forced statement. It reveals
facts as they were and leaves it at that while telling an emotional tale about a girl who has always been shielded lest she faces the bitter facts about the
life she has left behind her. The reels that unfold are akin to that of turning over pages of a novel as one thread leads to another and in the end
culminating into a horrific truth that was buried deep for good.
Rating: ***1/2
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