Ae Watan Mere Watan

Darab Farooqui and Kannan Iyer's story is fascinating and it presents an untold chapter of India’s freedom struggle. Darab Farooqui's screenplay is effective. The storyline itself is so intriguing that the script automatically succeeds in involving the audience. However, at some point, the writing could have been tighter. Darab Farooqui's dialogues are conversational and reminiscent of the bygone era. Kannan Iyer's direction is first-rate. In 133 minutes, he depicts multiple subplots, while keeping the focus on the track of Usha and her quest to run a rebel radio station. This aspect is the best part of the film as it’s novel. There have been films on Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Sardar Udham Singh, the 1857 revolution, partition etc. However, this is the first such film on the Congress Radio. It’s quite fascinating to see the British trying their best to locate where the radio station is held.

Done well, this little-known slice of our recent history, should have given us a lead character to root for, and a tale full of fervour. For filmmakers tackling this tumultuous era, which has had so many cinematic iterations, the real challenge is always going to be to infuse freshness into familiar facts. And Ae Watan Mere Watan had a readymade, potent weapon: a young woman, growing up under the tutelage of a strict-yet-loving father and a supportive aunt, breaking free, standing up for herself, and her country. But there’s nothing about this period drama which breaks out of familiar moulds. Right from an opening scene when little Usha looks up at a row of Siberian cranes, giving her father a chance to dole out a sonorous lecture about, yes, finding her wings, you despair: the dialogue, overall writing, treatment, plotting, is a banal blur.

Bollywood biopics have a tendency to shuffle chronologies, romanticise or overstate the truth. Ae Watan Mere Watan isn't above fictionalising Usha Mehta's story or depicting the Brits like one-note grimacing geezers (Alexx O'Nell). Yet, before it slumps into a needless overdrive of dramatic excesses and stagy hysterics, there's a sincere desire to capture the early 1940s. For a movie where radio acts as a powerful tool, Ae Watan Mere Watan exemplifies the importance of having a voice in Darab Farooqui's eloquent expressions. Director Kannan Iyer's world building relies on the everyday challenges faced by its young protestors upholding Gandhian values and rejecting capitalism yet bending over backwards to raise funds for their mission -- 'Bina paison ke inquilab tak laana namumkin hai batao', one of them shakes his head in amusement.

The character, who idolises Mahatma Gandhi, just suddenly decides to take up celibacy, with the makers not giving the audience any understanding whatsoever as to why it would be important for her. At times, the dialogues turn unintentionally funny too (which, sadly, is fatal for a biopic like this)!