Tuesday 24 May 2016

Sarbjit~ Not another 'Shawshank Redemption'

Release date- 20th May 2016

One Word which describes the film- Woeful

Best Dialogue- 'Marne dete nahi, aur zindagi cheen lete hai.' 

Genre- Biography/ Drama



Story- Utkarshini Vashishtha, Rajesh Beri

Direction-Omung Kumar


Budget- 25 Crores approximately

The only other prison film I have seen except Sarbjit is 'The Shawshank Redemption' which had this byline ,'
Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free', so while watching the film I was unconsciously comparing the former with the latter.
As such both the films are entirely different, whereas one film is about hope and justice, other is about how the life of the protagonist and his family members change because of his one act of carelessness. 
Sarbjit Singh gets arrested by Pakistani army for crossing the border unknowingly. He is tortured in the Pakistani jail for months until he accepts that he is Ranjit Singh Mattu who was the main culprit behind the Lahore bomb blasts.
Randeep Hooda has given such a stellar performance that when he comes on screen your heart goes out to him. The atrocities he faces in the prison look so real that you will cry for him. He has shed all body mass and in some scenes it actually looks as if he starved himself for weeks to get into the character. In the end he tells his lawyer,' hausla to kab ka khatam ho gaya hai, ab to bas jid bachi hai', we cringe at the kind of life these prisoners live in dark dungeons with no sense of time, where one day merges into another until weeks turn into years. 
Aishwarya Rai as Sarbjeet's sister gets even more screen space than him. Her life revolves around getting her brother out of prison. Aishwarya, I think is too pretty for her character. Even without much makeup, her beauty distracts us from the intensity she is trying to portray for the role. She tries but her act is no match for Randeep Hooda's performance.
Richa Chadha as the protagonist's wife has a small yet powerful role. She stays silent in most of the scenes, only near the end she says,'ladai to aapki hai, hamara to bas intezaar hai'. 
The film starts on a light note but in just 10 minutes the family is struck by misfortune and there is so much tragedy and pathos in every scene that by interval, everyone in the audience was in a state of silence .
After interval, the fight for justice continues without any hope or results.
The director successfully captures the painful lives of the different members of the family, it's just that the audiences feel more connected to Sarbjit, who gets much less screen space than other family members combined.
Music of the film is good. 'Salamat' sung by Arijit Singh and Tulsi Kumar can be heard on loop.
The film, like other Bollywood films released in last month got immense competition from 'X-Men: Apocalypse' and managed to collect just 16 Crores in 4 days which is way below par.

In a line, 'Justice delayed is justice denied' and like plea for Sarbjit's release was rejected by Pakistan  similarily the length of the film and focus on the protagonist's sister more than the protagonist, becomes the key factor of being the film rejected by the audiences.

Can be seen in theaters, if you can handle the pathos and pain.

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