While Hollywood keeps on interpreting and revisiting the historical events that have changed the course of its history, and it is awarded as well, manifest from the Oscars Award that ARGO got, which was a narration associated with American hostages in Iranian embassy, cinematic fraternity in India has slowly-slowly started realizing the fact that the vital flag posts of the present times, indeed provide an element of connect and have the potential to be commercially hit at the box-office as well.
Ram Gopal Varma's latest offering THE ATTACKS OF 26/11, belongs to this genre, and it looks at the attacks on Mumbai five years ago, that shook the consciousness of the entire nation and world as well. RGV has taken his favorite actor Nana Patekar, who has delivered one of most definitive performances in his acting career. Even Lal Krishna Advani praised the film, and it has also been lapped by the fans of cinema at the Cannes film festival as well. THE ATTACKS OF 26/11 is a stark reminder about the cataclysmic pain that the nation went through and each one of us need to view it to understand how one could face such kind of situations.
As it has been mentioned above, Hindi cinema has been slow in picking up the nuggets from history to use it as content for cinema, but whenever it has done, it has met with definite impact. Here is a list of few such films:
A WEDNESDAY: Neeraj Pandey's debut film A WEDNESDAY was one of the most hard hitting films associated with bomb blasts in Mumbai local trains and the cinematic representation the way it was done, made people realize all over the world the gravity of the situation, and the helplessness of the common person on the streets against such attacks of terrorism.
MUMBAI MERI JAAN : This was another take on the attack on Mumbai, but from the perspective of a media professional and pointed out the hazards that they face while covering such news as also the futility of their efforts to break the news, when they become a part of the news by virtue of surprise attacks.
NEW YORK: Kabir Khan's film tried to explore the other side of the spectrum, more so the paranoia that USA had developed after 9/11 attacks against anybody and everybody who has an Islamic name or a facial appearance that connotes similarities whereby an individual can supposed be construed as being a Muslim and hence a terrorist.
It was a hard hitting film that underlined the fact that terrorists are not made, but it is the circumstances that gradually make them slip into it.
ROJA: Roza was amongst the films that dealt with the genre of exchange kidnappings that had come into vogue around two decades ago, was succinctly picturised by Mani Ratnam in this path breaking film.
It drew inspiration from kidnap of a south Indian professional posted in Kashmir. ROJA emerged as one of the reference films which talks about spirit of nationalism.
Such being the illustrated history, one hopes that THE ATTACK OF 26/11 also becomes a cult film down the line.
