| Subject: `Raichand Pakistani` - another brilliant film ! |
Author:
Ramnik Shah
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Date Posted: Thu, October 23 2008, 19:20:36-4
This is another of London Film Festival`s offerings. Like `Firaaq`, it too is a brilliant production and one not to be missed. To all of us and others who are familiar with the Indian sub-continent`s mix of cultures, ethnicities, religions and geopolitics, the name `Ramchand` is a giveaway of course, and so its juxtaposition with Pakistan has to be intriguing, which it is at face, but I have no doubt that the title must have been deliberately chosen, to make the point that it is about a Hindu Pakistani!
The eponymous Raichand is a mere child, aged 8, of a family belonging to the low-caste Hindu community of `untouchables` who eke out an almost nomadic existence as landless peasant farmers on the Pakistani side of the Thar Desert very near to the border with India. The film is based on real events. One day the child stupidly and accidentally crosses over into India and is immediately seized by Indian border guards, and so is his father who goes looking after him, and the two are held prisoner by the Indians. The film is based on real events that happened in the early part of 2002, at a time when tensions between India and Pakistan were at boiling point, following the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. And so it was hardly surprising if the Indians thought the father and son were some kind of Pakistani spies. They were also of course part of a much bigger number of innocent border crossers, from either side, who have been a constant feature of Indo-Pak `neighbourly` relations ever since Partition. Many of them have languished in the jails of their respective captors for decades, and so after the two had settled down to a prison routine, their only hope lay in being amnestied as part of prisoner exchanges that take place from time to time.
But that is only one aspect of the film. A large part of it focuses on the human elements - how the mother left behind on her own copes with her loneliness and vulnerability, how the 8 year old child grows up in the harsh prison environment, how the father is tortured by the Indians and has to fight his fellow inmates to protect himself and his son, how hope turns into despair, at both ends, how officialdom treats them all, and how attitudes slowly change. That is as far as one can go without divulging the plot too much.
The female lead part is played by Nandita Das (who directed `Firaaq`), the only Indian in the whole cast in fact; the rest are played by Pakisani actors and indeed the entire film was shot in Pakistan, though as the producer Javed Jabbar explained, both before and after the show, once the project had got under way, there was a great deal of cooperation between the Indian and Pakistani authorities. In particular he mentioned that the production team were allowed to visit Bhuj jail in India and so they were able to replicate its conditions and physical layout and secondly that the Pakistanis allowed Nandita Das full access into the border regions on their side, both of which were `firsts` for the two countries film-makers. `Raichand` has already opened in both India and Pakistan to favourable reviews.
Javed Jabber, then, is the producer, but the film is directed by his very able and accomplished daughter Mehreen whom he described as an independent minded person and artist in her own right. She was also present at the showing, but did not stay long because of some other commitments and so it fell upon him to explain the background to the making of the film. He said he had first of all to convince his wife to put up the initial finance, and then negotiate with other contributors. Jabbar came across as such a lovely man - a highly articulate, very moral, dignified and civilized person, that it was little wonder that he and his family could have been the force behind such an impressive project. He said he had learnt about the displaced family while working with a charity in the area and concluded that the world at large too needed to be told about them. The film is a beautiful and sensitive rendering of their story. The part of the husband (Shanker) is played by Rashid Farooqui and that of the son in the second half of the film, when he had become a budding teenager, by Navaid Jabbar, another member of the Jabbar family. All the acting is superb, and the whole narrative moves along with subtlety and economy, while the locational scenery lends a large measure of authencity. A film not to be missed indeed.
RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, UK
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