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Parzania

Movie Parzania Director Rahul Dholakia Producer Rahul Dholakia Music Zakir Hussain Cast Naseeruddin Shah, Corin Nemec, Sarika, Parzun Dastur

Subhash K Jha

Ignore the strange spoken language. Focus on the language of the heart in this intensely deep-focused dramatic and moving portrayal of a family coping with communal carnage. Though you can't figure out why a rioter or a newspaper hawker would speak in the English language, you emerge from Rahul Dholakia's film thoroughly shaken and stirred to the core. Parzania is not an easy film to watch. So who said life can ever be easy? In what could easily be one of the most harrowing and moving depictions of the human side of communal violence since M.S Sathyu's Garam Hawa, Deepa Mehta's 1947 and Govind Nihalani's Dev, Dholakia takes us though a world of innocence, vulnerability, hatred and corruption in one gentle but resolute sweep of cinema and documentary. There's arresting abundance of fusion here between the reality of Gujarat after the Godhra carnage, and the more cinematic reality of the drama that ensues when any civilized society loses its vital moral equilibrium. To his credit. Dholakia never dwells on the drama. He constantly searches for a tragedy beyond the cinematic surface seeking out emotions that are not usually visible on screen. True, there's a lot of unifinished business here. And if you are searching for a nice rounded finale to the communal violence, then please watch Mani Rathnam's classic kitsch Bombay instead. In Dholakia's film the Parsi family never finds the son gone missing during the riots. What they discover, and so do we, is the core of humanism under the brutal surface that finally makes life worth living. Apart from the savage violence of the subject and the tragedy that underscores the story of the Parsi family's tortuous journey from riots to tentative redemption, the other discernably disturbing element is the narrative's open support of the Muslim cause. While the Hindu rioters are shown to be red-eyed saffron savages, the Muslims are gentle souls. And in the narrative's weakest link, the Muslim protagonist (played convincingly by Raj Zutsi) who is planning retaliatory violence is transformed by his fellow Muslim neighbor�s recrimination. Blessedly the spurts of simplistic soul salvation do not mar the intrinsic strengths of Dholakia's plot and characterizations. He moves in and out of wounded lives with an emotional virility and fluency that take Parzania to the level of a neo-classic. The riot scenes, shot in a blood-curdling melee of violent sounds (sound designer Manoj Sikka) and images (cameraman Robert Eras) clamp coldness around your heart. No character seems to be replicating reality. From the sozzled American journlalist(played with exceptional sensitivity by Colin Nemec) to the Muslim couple(Raj Zutsi and Sheeba Chadha), every actor moves beyond camera range to make a place in the deepest recesses of the heart. The film of course belongs to Naseer and Sarika. Watch Naseer break down into a sobbing mass for his lost child in the darkness of the movie theatre ironically screening Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (featuring the adorable boy Parzaan Dastur who plays the missing son in this film). But it's Sarika who makes you numb with grief. Her interpretation of the distraught mother's grief is so wide and deep, you get sucked into her tragedy without the crutches of hysteria. Watch her speak about the riots before the inquiry commission; you'll know you are watching an extraordinary actor at work. The grieving couple comes to terms with the tragedy in their life. Director Rahul Dholakia doesn't allow us the comfort of leaving the tragedy behind. Parzania is one of those films that leave you wounded for good. Long after the film you won't be able to forget even the smallest character�.the young Hindu boy who saves Sarika and her daughter from rioters, his debauched chacha who redeems himself by telling the truth about what happened during the riots, the rioter who lets the cowering Muslim girl escape�. The big and the small heroes become one in Parzania. The film celebrates the spirit of humanism amidst the turmoil of barbarism. At the end we're left with just one hope. Cinema will survive the harsh socio-political reality.