Opinion | Dhurandhar: Hindi Cinema’s Coming Of Age |
Two recent films have put to rest a question that I often asked myself — why doesn’t India tell its stories from its own perspective, its own POV, if you will. The first is a runaway sleeper hit playing on Netflix, Baramulla, and the second is the high-octane, massively mounted spy thriller, Dhurandhar, which you can catch at a cinema near you now. Let’s focus on what makes both Baramulla and Dhurandhar path breaking, signalling the coming-of-age of Indian cinema.
Situated in completely distinct genre universes, Baramulla and Dhurandhar converge on one specific point — the narratives foreground forgotten Indians, which in the case of Baramulla are the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley whose stories of genocide, rape, and exile have been buried under layers of apathy, neglect, ignorance, and a deliberate attempt at restricting access to the truth that lay at the heart of what has been termed as the “KP exodus". Dhurandhar, on the other hand, unpacks the extent of India’s strategic and intelligence success in the geopolitical context despite being hit by multiple terror attacks from across the border. The narrative underscores the successful infiltration of Pakistan’s terror infrastructure by Indian intelligence operatives and the monumental risk at which they place their lives so that we might lead peaceful and secure lives. The “forgotten Kashmiri Pandits" and the “unsung Unknown Gunmen" lead the screenplays in both these cinematic creations.
World building remains the heart of both landscapes. In Dhurandhar, one witnesses Hindi cinema’s finest attempt at world building, recreating Pakistan’s Karachi across time and space and........