Although Not Perfect, Bastar: The Naxal Story Acquaints Us with a Harsh Reality That Must Be Experienced!
By Avik Basak
When a regular movie-goer in India goes to the movie theatre, they expect a combination of substance and entertainment so that they can escape from the harsh reality they have to face each and every day. However, often comes along a film (Nowadays, that often is coming quite thick and fast) that instead of providing an escape route from reality, introduces the viewer to it. A reality that has been tactfully hidden from him or her by way of a political narrative. Sudipto Sen’s Bastar: The Naxal Story falls into this second category.
If you are expecting a commercial potboiler that is based against the backdrop of one of the biggest Naxal attacks in the history of our nation, then you might want to tweak your expectations a little bit. Because this film doesn’t merely take inspiration from this black day that took place in 2010 but it brings the entire event back to life and throws it at your face in a blunt, no-nonsense way. In the process, it also manages to expose all the underlying conspiracies that not only ensured the suffering of the local, ordinary people of Bastar but also were plotting to break up the nation from the inside.
The film begins by directly addressing the fake narratives spewed by our so-called intelligentsia about what actually goes on in the jungles of these Maoist-controlled areas. It manages to showcase a parallel between the ground reality of these conflict zones and what is actually presented in the media. It asks some harsh questions such as how an incident like a man getting chopped into 36 pieces in front of his own family, just because he dared to raise the national flag and sing the national anthem, does not raise the eyebrows of human rights activists. However, when the security forces try to reply to these savages in their own language, suddenly human rights seem to be dying a pitiful death. It also bluntly reminds us how the killing of 76 CRPF jawans in the jungles of Bastar was celebrated in supposedly one of the most prestigious universities in the country. So, if you are someone who likes to avoid any uncomfortable confrontations with reality, this might not be the film for you. Still, it should be because sometimes, confrontations with reality are important.
At the heart of the film are two women. On one hand, is IG Neerja Madhavan (Adah Sharma), who is a daring CRPF officer who is not afraid to go to any lengths to free Bastar from the poison of Naxalism and help the local innocent people who spend their lives in fear. And then there is Ratna (Indira Tiwari), the local tribal woman whose husband is brutally killed in front of her eyes while her son has been snatched away to turn into a Naxalite terrorist. What brings them together is their thirst for revenge against the local Maoist commander, Lanka Reddy (Vijay Krishna) and their desire for the situation to improve in Bastar. It is great to see that the event involving the massacre of the 76 CRPF jawans has not been shown as an isolated event because the situation was so dire in Bastar that local people and security forces were getting killed every other day. It is important to evoke that feeling of impending danger at each and every moment in the mind of the audience. The filmmakers have succeeded in doing that with flying colours.
After The Kerala Story, Adah Sharma is once again in fine form here but it is Indira Tiwari’s Ratna that stands out and will make you feel for the helpless mothers of Bastar who lost their children to this Maoist mayhem. The supporting cast, consisting of Yashpal Sharma as the Supreme Court lawyer pleading the case for the security forces, Kishor Kadam as the local anti-Naxal militia head Rajendra Karma and Vijay Krishna as the main antagonist Lanka Reddy, do well to complement the two leading ladies. But we have to separately mention Raima Sen as the leftist intellectual writer-professor Vanya Roy and Shilpa Shukla as the celebrity lawyer Neelam Nagpal, representing the so-called intellectual circle who make our skin crawl with their performances in these negative roles.
It is not like everything is perfect in this film. When you are making a film on such a vast issue, it becomes a little difficult to weave everything into a narrative to offer a seamless viewing experience to the audience and it is here, that the film falters a little. We must give due credit to director Sudipto Sen and creative producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah for some of the parallels they have managed to draw between contrasting scenarios, such as the stark contrast between the courtroom procession where false facts and evidence were being presented and the actual on-ground reality. However, the arrangements of the events and the set pieces seem a bit haphazard, to say the least. The way the third act of the film reaches its conclusion also leaves a lot to be desired. Moreover, the film seems so raw that many might find it difficult to sit through its 124-minute runtime. But all this can be overlooked or forgiven as the mere fact that a film on such a conflicted subject could be made against all the opposition, is a massive gain in itself.
Overall, despite all its shortcomings, Bastar: The Naxal Story is a very important film and deserves a watch. It does not satisfy you with a solution but that is expected from a film on such a disturbing subject; its main purpose is to get us acquainted with the reality that had been kept hidden for such a long time. You might agree or disagree with its stance but you should not ignore it.
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