A love story blooms between a hindu and a muslim in the midst of the mayhem that followed the partition of this country.The lovers are separated but their true love overcomes all odds and they reunite again .. That’s Gadar-Ek prem katha.
The partition was a painful fact that split our country amid a lot of bloodshed and it’s heartening to see someone from the fantasy ridden hindi film industry taking up a this subject.
Tara Singh (Sunny Deol) is a jat truck driver whose family was murdered with scores of others when they were trying to leave Pakistan. The arrival of the train laden with dead bodies sparks the bloody riots in India and muslims are forced to go to Pakistan. In the midst of this mayhem Tara Singh meets Sakina(Amisha Patel)who subsequently get’s separated from her family. Since Tara Singh happens to know Sakina from her college days, he saves her from getting murdered and raped. Slowly love blossoms between the two of them and soon they are married. The couple are leading a happy family life with a son when Sakina comes to know that her family is alive and her dear dad is the mayor of Lahore. Daddy dearest(Amrish Puri) hates India and Indians and makes all efforts to prevent Tara Singh from coming to Pakistan to get his wife. Love knows no boundaries and Tara Singh breaks through all barriers to take his wife back to India in a extremely unbelievable climax.
There is a lot going for this movie. Lagaan’s weakest point is Gadar’s strongest. The movie grips you from the first frame and forces you to pay attention to the proceedings. The director (Anil Sharma) has done a good job with his story telling and manages to keep us involved for a daunting 3 hours plus.The screenplay is good and the scenes of people fleeing packed like sardines in the sole 4 bogie train that will take them to their respective country is well shot. In fact the crowd scenes are really well shot and the editing is crisp.A big surprise are the songs which is not only good to listen to but really enjoyable to watch. The extremely energetic ’’ek mod aa gaya’’ song had the audiences clapping and whistling. Sunny Deol comes up with a brilliant performance and it’s one of his best so far. He has made a habit of literally shouting out his dialogues specially when he has to convey anger but this somehow manages to work really well in Gadar. How else would you react if someone tried to stop you from meeting your wife forcibly? How else would you react if someone said a lot of nonsense about your country? However, Sunny Deol is much better in the first half in the romantic scenes. It’s not that his romantic performance is better then his angry or frustrated performance but the way he conveys his silent love through his eyes is really brilliant. There are scenes in the movie where he has to transform his feelings from love to anger and frustration and the transition is brought out so brilliantly by him that you feel like giving him the best actor award right at that moment. Amisha Patel comes up with a inspired performance and she even looks pretty.(which is’nt difficult for her).She lives and breathes Sakina which is commendable for the simple reason that it’s just her second movie. Of course, if she does the same part 3 years from now she will come up with a much better performance but then don’t we all improve in our jobs with experience?
Unfortunately, Gadar tends to turn steadily into a typical hindi masala film steadily in the second half.The mystery of Tara Singh’s suddenly appearing and disappearing beard beats me like it did the entire country. I guess the movie took a few years to make and the technicians lost continuity in some scenes. Tara Singh’s illegal entry into Pakistan and his managing to beat the daylights out of every pakistani soldier is a little difficult to believe. Also, the last 45 minutes there is complete mayhem with the climax being stretched till you start hoping that it ends soon.The climax on the train is also a little over the top with Tara Singh beating out the pakistani army single handedly. But why do we applaud Sly Stallone when he single handedly destroys the russian army based in Afghanistan in Rocky III and start guffawing when Sunny does something similar? why the double standards? why the hypocrisy? Why this attitude of anything hollywood does is cool while a similar thing in a hindi movie is so un-cool? Why can’t we have the same set of rules for hollywood and hindi films? (NOTE: I have not referred to hindi film industry as bollywood) Again, our intellectuals and classes ( give us a break all you so called classy people, we don’t need you) have been vocal that there is a lot of anti-pakistan or anti-muslim rhetoric. what’s wrong in that? Do you want the director to make a pro-paksitan movie? Again, Tara Singh never says anything against pakistan in the movie until he is forced to react because of the anti-india dialogues of the pakistan character’s. Switch on your TV sets guys and you will constantly find anti-india statements coming from pakistan. have you seen any anti-Pakistan statement from India? And this movie is in no way hurting the sentiments of any community. As it is the muslim’s in india feel hurt for the flimsiest of reasons. They want the movie banned because the name of the heroine is Sakina or because she is doing her namaaz with sindoor in her head!! These are no reasons for demanding a ban. My guess is the real reason all the hardline muslim organizations called for a ban was because they did’nt like the anti-paksitan dialogues in the movie. This shows where there patriotism lies. And by the way, a few years back there was a movie Fiza that was based on the sufferings of the muslims in the 1992-93 Bombay riots, Why is it that that movie did’nt hurt the sentiments of hindus? After all hindus were shown as murderers in that movie? why is it that the sentiments of muslims always get hurt on the most flimsiest and silliest of reasons?
Why is it that we indians cannot deal with history? Partition is a fact and the mayhem that was there is also a fact. A friend of my grand-dad who fled pakistan for india lives close to my house and he said there were actually trains coming into amritsar with dead bodies. What is shown in the movie is based on facts. Has’nt America made movies on the Vietnam war? Why do we get so upset and why do we have this Ostrich like attitude when it comes to hard facts?For how long are we going to watch poor boy meets rich girl, they fall in love, elope and either die in the end or get married in the end nonsense? How long are we going to watch saccharine sweet joint family sagas and pretend to live in fantasies?
Despite a badly shot last 45 minutes Gadar is a very entertaining film and it should be watched at all costs.
Don’t Miss it for anything in this world!