Movie : Sikander
Cast : Parzan Dastur, Ayesha Kapoor, Sanjay Suri, R Madhavan, Arunoday Singh
Director : Piyush Jha
Missing it would have been easy. It was the vacation back home and also the opening weekend for the star-crossed production, rather strike-crossed with a delayed release. But when closer to the valley of Eden, one decided to watch the teen story. And it would be easily safe to say, there weren’t any regrets.
HE loves his football, wears his No. 9 Kaka jersey to bed, gets bullied by the school dadas, hates drinking milk. Sikandar could be just about any 14- year- old in the neighbourhood.
Or, maybe not. He lives in smalltown Kashmir with his uncle and aunt, having lost his parents in a jehadi strike. And when one day he finds a gun lying on the wooded path back home from school, he’s not exactly shocked. He keeps it.
Piyush Jha’s Sikandar tries giving the familiar Bollywood picture on Kashmiri terror a new angle. Sure, the army trucks are still rolling down the vivid hilly frames. Calculating politicians and guardians of faith get due screenplay space. The hardliner terrorist fixated on destruction is around too, to complete the picture. But these are all props in Jha’s film. The background provides the perfect plot for the average cumbersome, this one who is lost in the valley of dolls. All prophets, hardlined cynics, terror tourism whiners and real story
tellers have hit upon the perfect philosopher’s stone in Jha’s version. And while we steer easily clear of Majid Majidi school of cinema from his Iranian childhood woes, one can’t help but call Jha’s theory of relatability so. Yet in its true context, Sikander makes you see the Kashmir through a young’s eyes.
Sikandar is about today’s Kashmiri youngster who has known violence as a backdrop of life since birth — like the scenic hills or sparkling stream outside his window. In essence the attempt is more on presenting a thriller about innocence caught in a web that it doesn’t quite understand, than a cinematic comment on Kashmir today. And that’s a USP of sorts.
Sikandar ( Parzaan Dastur) the teenager hero is neither religiously motivated to take up the gun, nor is he dying to know what jehad is all about. The shy guy simply loves the feel of having a gun in the front pocket of his school bag, and cocks it around with filmy swagger when no one’s watching. Till it accidentally goes off, killing a lamb in the woods. The scene is a subtle plot pusher for the film. Sikandar now realises pointing his gun at the school bullies could make life a lot easier. Or, with a little more effort, he could use it to get the money his aunt could do with, to buy her dream washing machine.
Sikandar makes no attempt to drive the rhetoric drivel on war and peace, terror and fundamentalism. The film unfolds its anti- violence message quite simply — and that’s a good thing.
It’s not common seeing a Bollywood flick being shouldered by a couple of teenagers — more so a thriller. Full marks to Parzaan Dastur and Ayesha Kapoor. Parzaan, who rocked as the cute Sardar charmer in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai a decade ago and then impressed with Parzania , looks assured all along as he essays Sikandar’s gradually cascading trauma.
He carries off the coy teenager with minimum dialogues and perfect
body language. Ayesha Kapoor as Nasreen, Parzaan’s only friend, adds a vital twist in the end. Returning to Bollywood after Black, Ayesha could have worked on her accent, though. R. Madhavan as the deceptively tough army man and Sanjay Suri as the scheming political head are notable. The surprise act however comes from debutant Arunoday Singh, as terror mastermind Zahgeer Qadir. This is definitely a spectacle from Gulon Mein!
Tags: bollywood, movie-review, parzaan-dastur, sikandar
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