In an industry dedicatedly given to churning out escapist cinema, films based on terrorism sell like hot cakes.
It’s a modern day menace that touches everybody’s life one way or another. And 9/11 was the defining moment in the history when terrorism became a global phenomenon. Since art imitates life, filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic too have been inspired to make movies on the theme of terrorism.
In apna Bollywood, terrorism has sparked the imagination of a number of filmmakers, from Kunal Kohli to Anurag Kashyap, from Kabir Khan to Rensil D’Silva.
Three years ago we saw Aamir Khan playing a terrorist in Kohli’s film Fanaa. It was the story of an undercover terrorist and his torrid affair with a blind Kashmiri girl (Kajol), who interestingly guns him down in the end. The film, though panned by critics, did fairly well at the box office.
Anurag Kashyap revisited the 1993 Bombay…err…Mumbai serial blasts which claimed over 1,500 lives in his hard hitting film Black Friday which got rave reviews from critics but wasn’t exactly a money spinner at BO.
Year 2008 saw a spate of films on terrorism coming out of Bollywood. Aamir told the story of a Muslim doctor who finds himself at the mercy of extremists after landing in Mumbai; Mumbai Meri Jaan recreated the aftermath of the Mumbai train bombings of 2006; A Wednesday was the story of a common man taking up cudgels against the terrorists. All three films either got critical acclaim or box office success or both.
Having dealt with the terror at home, the filmmakers in Bollywood turned their attention to 9/11 this year. In New York Kabir Khan tried to depict the angst of an innocent Muslim youth in the US who becomes a covert terrorist after being tortured by authorities for being a terror suspect. And now, director Rensil D’Silva does something similar in this Friday’s release Kurbaan. In the film, Saif Ali Khan plays a college professor who marries Kareena Kapoor (also a professor) and settles down in the US. But there is another side to Saif’s personality that slowly comes to the fore in the US.
Saif did a lot of research and read religious literature to understand his character well. Director D’Silva says the film tries to tell a thought-provoking story with utmost objectivity and without taking sides. Advertisement
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