Some would question the filmmaker’s temerity to examine the lure of 72 hoors by terror-grooming maulvis while others would applaud National Award-winning director Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan for daring to choose a theme that is timeless, topical and needed to be told.
Some would critique it without watching it and dismiss it as one more film that shows fanatical chinks in one religion while others would appreciate the reality check it makes on the pliable who are misled into believing they are performing a religious duty.
Some would also call this irregular, non-commercial cinema while others would look at it as non-conformist filmmaking.
Take your pick.
It takes a while to realise that Hakim (Pavan Raj Malhotra) and Bilal (Aamir Bashir) who are floating atop Victoria Terminus are two dead suicide bombers, ready to enter and embrace the jannat promised to them by Maulvi Sadiq Sayed (late Pakistani actor Rasheed Naz).
Check Out: How Aamir Bashir Agreed To Do 72 Hoorain
The conversations between Hakim and Bilal unfold the brainwashing that’s done in the name of religion where 72 beautiful angels await the terrorist. Anil Gupta’s writing and Puran Singh’s direction is unconventional as they don’t chest-beat or preach from a pulpit but focus on the maulvi-propaganda that has brought Hakim and Bilal to where they are.
From where they are perched to where they finally land between railway lines is an arc from the ecstasy of heaven to the harshness of ground realities, as the mood shifts. Buoyant, blind allegiance to misrepresented faith segues into uncertainty as Hakim and Bilal wonder why they aren’t at jannat’s door with the pleasures of 72 hoors, even giving excuses to themselves that it’s because they haven’t yet got a proper burial. Hey, we’re supposed to be buried, not burnt.
As the conversation veers from the celestial delights that await them, to the doubts that begin to creep in before the dawn of disillusionment, Sanjay Puran Singh makes Hakim and Bilal take a bird’s eye-view of the havoc they’ve left behind with their bomb blast at Gateway of India. The victims cut across all religious faiths and the bereaved belong to all communities, with Bilal realising his folly before a stauncher Hakim.
Pavan Malhotra aces it as Hakim with a range of moods and Aamir Bashir gives him believable company.
Like Hollywood’s Oscar-winning Spotlight told a crucial story of the church and its cover-up of widespread child abuse which was taken in the spirit it was meant and not dissed as anti-Christian, 72 Hoorain platforms religious terrorism where the perpetrator is also a victim, a victim of radicalisation.
However, like the theme which hangs between life and death, the film too hangs between wanting to make a point and balancing its fallout. In its keenness to negate the perception that the filmmaker is out to lampoon a religion, there is repeated focus on the nobility of the Indian Muslim and much effort in showcasing the grief of a Muslim victim’s family. In fact, a Hindu male is shown ugly and unpleasant.
There is also a prolonged kissing scene that is completely out of place and nowhere in sync with the seriousness of the subject.
At the end, the question that arises is, while it spotlights terrorists who are misguided into creating violent chaos and cautions a community not to fall into a bigoted trap, will the target audience watch it? Will it work at the box-office when it’s unorthodox in its narration and doesn’t particularly appease any community?
The questions call for another conversation.
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