Amu

[Jeevan]

http://www.southasianmedia.net/cnn.cfm?id=...e&Country=INDIA

A daring, moving work

Thursday, January 06,2005

NEW DELHI: Shonali Bose's Amu is one of the most significant films to come out of India in years. Rarely have we seen a recent Indian film that is so daring, weaving in big political, feminist themes with such sophistication. Yet it is a film that we will long remember precisely because all of these are subsumed under a moving, emotional mother-daughter tale. It is told with an integrity that shoots straight through the heart. How ironic then, that this debut film has been made by a U.S.-based non-resident Indian.

Amu is set against the backdrop of the horrific anti-Sikh riots of 1984, when an estimated 10,000 Sikhs were butchered following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The two bodyguards were convicted but the families of the thousands of Sikhs killed are still waiting for justice. And the Congress, which was in power then, presides over the country today.

The story is of Kaju, a young NRI (Konkona Sen Sharma), who comes to India to familiarise herself with her roots. She was adopted by Keya, now a U.S.-based NRI activist (Brinda Karat, in real life a leader of the CPI(M) and the All-India Democratic Women's Association), when she was three. As Kaju explores Delhi, including its slums — with a friend Kabir — she stumbles upon a dark secret of her past that her mother had kept from her.

In unravelling the truth about her birth and adoption, she realises that both their lives are irrevocably link

ed to the riots of 1984.

The film seamlessly travels between the 1984 pogrom and the present. (The censors have imposed five audio cuts, and given it an `Adults' certificate on the specious ground that it was unnecessarily raking up old issues.)

The screenplay is outstanding. You sense that its integrity comes from experience, not mere research. In fact, the director was an activist working in the post-riots relief camps.

As for the acting, Konkona Sen Sharma and Brinda Karat are superb, but so too are many smaller characters, including Ankur Khanna, Yashpal Sharma, Loveleen Mishra and the granny. Non-actors Brinda Karat and the granny fortify its authenticity.

Certainly, other films have dared to take on political issues. Apart from the Bengali and Malayali tradition of films tackling Communism and Partition, and Mani Ratnam's films, we have recently seen Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday (on the 1993 bomb blasts following Bombay's communal riots), Sudhir Mishra's Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi (A Thousand Dreams Such As These) and Aparna Sen's Mr and Mrs Iyer. Bose tackles the communal riots head on.

Amu seems closest in spirit to that powerfully moving, brilliant documentary My Mother India by Safina Uberoi, also a personal tale unravelling against the anti-Sikh riots.

The horror of the riots is leavened with humour, irony, self-deprecation and telling class observations. Kaju's Delhi friend Kabir learns about the riots from the Internet via his laptop, and in a masterstroke of corrosive irony, when Kaju asks her Delhi relatives what they did during the riots, they busy themselves with Bengali `kalchar', singing Bhupen Hazarika's `O Gonga tumi.'

The film ends with a reference to the Gujarat riots. But its real strength is that the director goes beyond pointing out the guilty: she indicts herself as well.

Finally, this is a film about people like us. Shonali Bose prises through culture and poise to degenerating moral cores, ye

t she links arms with all of us.

The Hindu |

[Singhstah]

Waheguroo Jee Ka Khalsa!

Waheguroo Jee Kee Fateh!!

sounds good, lets just hope our shaheeds are portrayed correctly

[The flying SikhMan]

WJKK

WJKF,

Lets wait praising this movie before we see it. :e: