Movie Review: Firaaq

Banner: Percept Picture Company
Director: Nandita Das
Story Writer: Nandita Das, Shuchi Kothari
Star Cast : Naseruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Raghuveer Yadav, Deepti Naval, Sanjay Suri, Shahana Goswami, Tisca Chopra, Dilip Joshi, Suchita Trivedi, Sumeet Raghavan, Vicky Ahuja, Amruta Subhash, Arun Kumar, Mohammad Samad
Music Director: Rajat Dholakia, Piyush Kanojia
Cinematography: Ravi K. Chandran
Art: Gautam Sen
Editor: Sreekar Prasad
Screenplay: Nandita Das, Shuchi Kothari
Sound: Manas Chaudhary

“Firaaq” has been made on communal riots taking the Godhara incident as base and the film depicts six different stories of people of different class and society who suffer losses of relations, property and much more, during the riot. Every time when there is a crisis in society or a riot happens or militant attack takes place or a war, anywhere in any part of the world, people have to face similar events, the minority or the less equipped group has to suffer.

Nandita Das shows touching stories of people of different gender, age group and communities, who suffers losses during such crisis and the performance of lead actors is brilliant.

The first story is about Aarti who is a housewife and when a Muslim woman seeks refuge at her house during riots, she couldn’t take up a decision to help her for fear and she feels the agony of being unhelpful at the time of need throughout her life. Her pain is much and she tortures herself physically to get out of the mental agony.

Second story is of Khan Saheb who is a respectful musician living in a region mostly dominated by Hindus and he couldn’t trace out the changing religious grouping. A Muslim auto driver’s wife trusts her friends and feels cheated when she gets back to her home after the riots. A married Hindu woman is married to a Muslim man who couldn’t make up a decision not to shift his base to Delhi to avoid religious conflicts. The movie shows the slum dwellers are always worried of the eruption of another communal riot.

There are many other incidents that depict the fear prevalent in society when a riot erupts anywhere in any part of the country or the world and the people who suffer losses at a time of social crisis are not directly related to the cause of incident but they suffer. Performance of Naseeruddin Shah, Deepti Naval and Raghubir Yadav is brilliant. Same can be said for Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra. Paresh Rawal plays Deepti’s dominating husband and he is in a small effective role in the movie.

The movie will get praised in various film festivals. As for commercial success of “Firaaq” nothing can be said.

Rating: 4/10