Not since Rakeysh Mehra's Rang De Basanti have we seen a film so inspiring.
Portions of Heroes are pure genius, sparkling with the unshed tears of a mother whose child has died before she could hold it in her arms and nurture it.
Here's a piece of cinema that we need to stand and applaud for its idealism , its absolute absence of cynicism in telling a story that invites the conscience to cry for a country and global society that can't think beyond its own nose.
But wait. Heroes is not a flag-waving exercize propagating the join-the-army message.
Yes, to begin with , the film does put forward that message . So did Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya. But that's another story.
But soon enough you journey across the toughest Indian terrain of intense warmth and acute cold in pursuit of a dream that transcends the nightmare of everyday existence .And you realize Heroes is about bereavement and how to cope with it without getting cynical about sloganeering subjects like patriotism and desh-bhakti.
To a wife in Punjab who copes with a child and her dead soldier's parents on her own, or a wheelchaired soldier who has lost his kid brother to war, or to an aging couple coping with the death of their only son to war, does it matter if the country needs to be protected from outside aggression?
The answer to the question is not provided in rhetorics and sermons but in the course of the vivid journey that takes our two narrators Sohail and Vatsal Sheth to the heart of the country.
Heroes follows suit. It's shot on location in the hearts of characters who are wounded by war without going to the battle friend.
This isn't the first film about the war bereaved coping with their loss . At times Heroes is redolent of J.P Dutta's Border and LOC Kargil….those homesick solidiers writing those lovelorn letters from the battlefront , the battery of war vehicles winding their way through the mountainous terrain, the soldiers coming home in coffins…
Yup, we've seen it all before. But director Samir Karnik succeeds in taking the theme of social responsibility patriotism and soldierly duties far beyond the clichés.
Some interludes woven into the multitude of grieving characters' lives are heartstopping in their poetic lucidity. The look in Preity's eyes when she hold her dead husband's letter in her trembling hands, or much much later when our two narrators reach a snowcapped salvation and travel in a vehicle loaded with coffins of war martyrs…or Mithun Chakraborty's breakdown before his dead son's picture….dude, this is not an ordinary cinematic happening!
Heroes connects with us in ways that are emotional and spiritual. Often while you watch the characters live through a devastating loss, you feel the screenwriter, dialogue writer and director breathe a vigorous life into the scenes by harnessing and articulating feelings that threaten to be washed by tears.
Karnik goes for an emotional understatement even when he's at liberty to pull out all stops. All three segments of bereavement and reconconciliation are designed with a great deal of emotional honesty and clamped intensity. If one has to pick a favourite it would have to be the first overture in journey where Vatsal-Sohail meet the brave Punjabi war widow.
Disappearing into herself to emerge with a character who is ramrod-straight and dignified in her tragedy , Preity Zinta gives the film's best performance…and that's saying a lot in film scattered with sensitive portrayals.
Preity's eyes convey aeons of dignified pain.
Effortlessly and persuasively Katnik goes from pure emotionalism to unstoppered populism. Watch Sunny Deol's fight in the pub where he swings into full-fledged action from a wheelchair. This is what the junta would call a full paisa-vasool sequence.
It's astonishing how the director uses full-blown commercial actors to play characters who touch emotions that are generally denied access in our mainstream cinema.
Besides Preity, Sunny Deol(more for his character's packaging than basic performance) and Mithun Chakbraborty , the child actor Dwij Yadav Sohail Khan leave the strongest impression. Vatsal Sheth's rawness goes well with his spoilt-rich-coming-of-age character, a sort of Hrithik Roshan from Lakshya on wheels.
The actors are supported by locations that ooze the emotions of the characters in the right shades of life.
The two cinematogaphers Binod Pradhan and Gopal Shah create stirring echoes of spiritual and emotional majesty without letting the colour schemes become over-representational.
Throughout , the narrative retains the rhythms and emotions of life, never letting go of the threads that bind humanity to the suffering that comes with the existentiual territory.
On the minus side the songs and dances are largely over-stated and obtrusive. Sohail and Vatsal's striptease with Riya Sen and Amrita Arora belongs to another film, another world.
A special word for Samir Karnik and Aseem Arora's dialogues. The conversations convey both the reality of real life and the richness of a life that exists beyond the mundane motions of everyday chit-chat.
Did Samir Karnik really make Kyun, Ho Gaya Na. Will the real artiste please stand up? And take a bow.
Final Rating: * * * *
