There’s something totally shattering about sending your happy, healthy child away and having to receive her or him back home in a coffin. A moment that can melt the hardest of hearts, particularly if it gets emotionally(though also a wee bit affectedly) essayed by an actor like Shabana Azmi.
Neerja might be about flight attendant late Neerja Bhanot, how she fought for the lives of the passengers on board her Pan Am Flight 73 when it was hijacked on ground in Karachi by four armed Palestinians of the Abu Nidal group but the strongest cinematic bits in the film are those involving Neerja’s family. Don’t they say that it’s not an individual death that matters as much as its repercussions on those left behind? So too in the film. It’s not just the tragedy so much as its impact on the Bhanots that strikes a huge chord.