‘Jana Gana Mana’ movie review: Gets its politics right, not so much the execution

To make individuals query a few of their deeply-rooted biases, no quantity of speeches or hurling of info and proofs at them can repay at instances. A greater strategy to go about it is likely to be to first attraction to their biases, and slowly begin chipping it away from inside. Filmmaker Dijo Jose Antony and screenwriter Sharis Mohammed go by this maxim within the movie Jana Gana Mana.

In fairly an fascinating se-up, on the interval level, they get the viewers to cheer for encounter killings — which is sadly fairly fashionable in our society too — solely to spend the following half displaying why that entire thought is flawed. However, no less than in cinema, individuals would love the rug being pulled from beneath their ft, which is why many ended up cheering each for the thought and the dismantling of it.

On the centre of the narrative is a College in Karnataka. The charred physique of Saba (Mamta Mohandas), an outspoken professor who stands up towards the administration for varied points regarding the college students, is discovered close to the freeway, resulting in main scholar protests. In scenes paying homage to the actual world, the police beat up the protesting college students brutally. The belief within the police is abysmally low among the many college students when Sajjan Kumar (Suraj Venjaramoodu) takes cost of the investigation in a seemingly purposeful method.

After a not so nice debut in Queen, filmmaker Dijo Jose Antony widens the size of his ambition in his sophomore effort. The modern debates within the nation, across the progress of far proper politics, which survives on fixed stirring of the communal pot and dissemination of hate propaganda, should actually have been enjoying within the screenwriter’s thoughts whereas writing the movie.

However regardless of its proper intent and partly fascinating construction, the making is kind of uneven. A lot of the therapy is loud and over-dramatic, particularly the courtroom scenes within the latter half. Whereas it meanders pointlessly within the preliminary campus scenes, an excessive amount of is alleged in fairly a couple of rushed sequences in the direction of the tip. A lot of this has to do with the thriller round Prithviraj’s character, who re-appears solely on the interval level, after an introduction within the prologue. The script additionally banks on all of the incessant speaking that this character does, not solely to convey its political concepts, but additionally to disclose the twists within the story.

But for all its cinematic flaws, the movie doesn’t maintain something again so far as the politics that it desires to talk. It raises uncomfortable debates on how those that elevate questions are branded and focused, how the media units narratives on the behest of the institution, the way it performs into the inherent biases of the frequent individuals, and the way the politics of identification is used to divide individuals for votes.

Jana Gana Mana is at the moment operating in theatres