Afwaah Review: Sudhir Mishra's Film Isn't To Be Dismissed Lightly – NDTV

Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Afwaah. (courtesy: YouTube)

Forged: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bhumi Pednekar, Sumeet Vyas, Sharib Hashmi, Sumit Kaul, Appurv Gupta, TJ Bhanu, Rockey Raina, Eisha Chopra

Director: Sudhir Mishra

Ranking: 4 stars (out of 5)

Greater than a movie, Afwaah, Sudhir Mishra’s first theatrical launch in 5 years, is an act of braveness and a fervent plea for sanity in a time of bigotry and intolerance.

It will not be saying something that we don’t already know however the truth that it dares to say what has obtained to be stated, and with out mincing phrases at that, is deserving of unstinted applause.

Afwaah is targeted as a lot on an unsuspecting sufferer of intolerance and rumour-mongering as it’s on the perpetrators – and beneficiaries – of divisive politics. Mishra’s mellow therapy of a fragile political theme appreciably enhances the coherence and affect of the assertion.

Afwaah doesn’t holler and hector to drive dwelling its level. The anger that that it articulates is tempered with a mix of bafflement, trepidation and anguish. The movie’s ceaselessly syncopated tempo conveys the frenzy and the worry unleashed by males blinded by hatred and insanity.

Afwaah, written by Mishra, Nisarg Mehta and Shiva Shankar Bajpai, doesn’t come out swinging a mallet. It exudes the sharpness of a scalpel drilling into festering sores gnawing on the vitals of a society divided. It adopts an unwaveringly inquisitorial tone to handle an emotive, pressing topic.

The plot, which pans out over one night time, revolves round an insidious canard that wreaks havoc. A lynch mob goes on a rampage as a lie runs amok and endangers harmless lives.

Within the opening moments of Afwaah, an untruth sparks a brutal assault on a butcher. It unfolds off-camera, behind the downed shutter of a meat store. Politician Vicky Singh (Sumeet Vyas), main a procession of aggressive, slogan-shouting supporters, incites the gang with an incendiary speech. His hatchet man Chandan Singh (Sharib Hashmi) does the remaining.

As bother erupts and spreads, a video of the incident goes viral and the politician’s fledgeling profession is pushed to the brink, a reputed adman, Rahab Ahmed (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), passing by way of his hometown on his solution to a literary competition the place a ebook authored by his spouse is scheduled for launch, finds himself within the improper place on the improper time.

Rahab, who has returned to work in India after a profitable stint within the US, witnesses Nivedita ‘Nivi’ Singh (Bhumi Pednekar), a politician’s daughter, attempting to struggle off a bunch of armed males. He intervenes, oblivious of the chance concerned, and earns the ire of the politician.

On the behest of a social media adviser (performed by slapstick comedian Appurv Gupta), Vicky Singh floats a ‘love jihad’ hearsay. The demagogue is unmindful of the devastating penalties of the false narrative and totally conscious of the advantages he can reap by inciting his easy-to-sway base.

Rahab is sucked right into a life-threatening scenario that spirals uncontrolled because the night time wears on and Vicky Singh’s hit squad units off in pursuit of a person they don’t even know.

The mayhem Afwaah extends from the armed goons scouring the streets to the lit fest frat celebrating in a fort decked up for the event. Whereas the previous will cease at nothing to hold out their chief’s diktat, the latter are too comfortably ensconced of their bubble (the place they’ve gathered, one can safely presume, to carry forth on creativity and freedom) will not be in a rush to supply any kind of resistance to the mob.

As Rahab and Nivi run for canopy, the latter spots a snake slithering out of a burrow. She warns Rahab to be careful. However the serpent is clearly the least of the threats that he faces. There may be venom within the air and neither the 2 nor the viewers can guess how issues will end up.

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Caught between the lynch mob and their self-serving grasp is a radicalised foot soldier who has outlived his utility. He, too, appears to be like for security and finds it in a truck carrying animals presumably for slaughter. What dies plenty of occasions throughout the adman’s flight is frequent sense even because the lady with him has the gumption to face up.

The police, represented by a corrupt inspector, Sandeep Tomar (Sumit Kaul), is completely happy to do Vicky Singh’s bidding. A feminine constable, Riya Rathod (Bhanu TJ), has her fingers tied for causes which might be each private {and professional}.

A employee on the politician’s farmhouse is killed and Riya Rathod is entrusted with the job to make sure that phrase of the cold-blooded homicide doesn’t get out.

Afwaah is an indictment of politics that thrives on driving wedges between communities. Whereas its blows should not at all times punchy, the movie picks its targets and takes a aspect judiciously and doesn’t flinch from going all the best way with its abhorrence for forces that experience swimming in troubled waters.

The camerawork (by Colombian cinematographer Mauricio Vidal) and the background rating (by Czech composer Karel Antonin, whose credit embrace Mishra’s Netflix movie Critical Males) lend Afwaah a particular texture and sound, whereas Atanu Mukherjee’s enhancing creates the staccato tempo that enhances the jumpiness on the coronary heart of the two-hour movie.

Lead actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui reunites together with his Critical Males director to play a job that’s poles other than the one which he essayed within the 2020 movie. He’s a small-town man who has ventured out into the world and made it massive.

His strains are peppered with English however on the outset the viewers is knowledgeable that he nonetheless thinks in Hindi. The dichotomy offers the character of Rahab Ahmed an intriguing twist that Siddiqui accentuates with assistance from delicate histrionic sleights.

Bhumi Pednekar because the runaway lady who is aware of not the place she goes however is aware of the place she is not hits all the fitting notes. Sumeet Vyas because the suave however openly opportunistic politico who manipulates ingrained prejudices to ease his path to energy etches out a hateful determine with out taking to recourse to inventory mannerisms.

Regardless of on which aspect of the divide one stands, Afwaah is not a movie to be dismissed evenly. It is going to, now and for occasions to come back, function a document of an period wherein we’re a false alarm away from an eruption of horrific violence – a state of affairs analogous to the photographs that the theme music (Aaj yeh basant, composed by Shamir Tandon with lyrics by Dr Sagar) conjures up – mustard fields yielding poppy seeds and a bumble-bee burning a butterfly’s wings with the assistance of a firefly.

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