In a scene from PrimeVideo’s Ae Watan Mere Watan, a young woman instinctively pledges chastity in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s mission to submit both soul and body to the fight for independence. Her fellow rebel and suitor though, fumbles at the moment of asking. It’s after all a tearing contradiction between socio-political youthfulness and the many primal urges that define its horizon. Of the countless cinematic portrayals of the freedom struggle, maybe none have contextualised adolescence as directly and as promisingly. And yet, most of that promise is squandered by execution and storytelling so flaccid and unconvincing all that angst and energy fizzles out the moment the cork of executing leaves the bottle of plot and potential.
Set in 1940s Bombay, the film follows Usha Mehta, played by a woefully cast Sara Ali Khan. Mehta is the daughter of a British-appointed judge, the kind who can see the silver lining in the cloud of colonisation. Even though her father discourages her, Usha and her band of college-going comrades decide to join the Congress in its non-violent struggle against the incumbent ruling class. The group thorough admirers of Gandhi, are also doting fans of Ram Manohar Lohia, played with calculated grace by Emraan Hashmi. After they are brutally suppressed at gatherings and rallies the young kids chance upon the revelation that information is the ‘real’ weapon of resistance; the channels to disseminate it far more lethal than any weapon conceivable. The solution proposed is Congress Radio, a channel for the offensive, about the offensive, by the offensive. It’s a fair alternative and given the declining trust in mainstream media a decidedly relevant topic. And yet all that notified potential is wasted by storytelling that feels stagey, insincere and clumsy.
Directed by Kannan Iyer and co-written by Darab Farooqui, Ae Watan Mere Watan doesn’t quite know just zesty and invigorating it is supposed to be. For a film about adolescents navigating occupation, evolving bodies and unavoidable urges, the film feels impishly outdated even by the standards of period films. Slogans like the iconic “Jeeyo Ya Maro” isn’t so much as built around as much as it is casually slipped into conversations teetering on the brink of confused silence. Mehta is supported by two young men, including the handicapped Fahad (Sparsh Shrivastava), a physical characteristic the film chooses to advance a plot point. That bit of needless ingenuity permitting the rest of the character sketches make for banal restless blobs of smoke without dire pockets of fire.
Mehta’s character, so rich as an undertaking of domestic as well as semi-public virtues is somewhat reduced to a puzzling, ineffective mix of sterile acting and lazy dialogue delivery. Khan clearly struggles with the weight on her shoulders, almost tellingly robbed of moments of undressed sincerity. In comparison, her two male compatriots, ably shoulder scenes that require a certain gravitas, the bodily naivety of young adults who must come to terms with the price of freedom: desire, future and fantasy. Khan is simply not up to the task, underserved by dialogue, staging, production quality and direction. There are sentimental nods to pre-partition harmony, a technological zing to the narrative but none of it can hide a central performance bereft of the body Bhagat Singh paid with or the soul Gandhi asked for. It’s like watching stiff, bloodless protagonist spout slogans and righteous lectures like any morning prayer from a neighbourhood school.
You can’t fault the motivation behind uncovering are relatively little known chapter from the Indian freedom struggle. The trajectory of its execution, however, struggles to even reach for the modest heights of a routine patriotic film. You hardly connect with the angst, the indignity or for that matter the curated physical pain. Even the bilious British officer chasing the radio channel that Mehta and co run, lack the brushstrokes of thrill or suspense. Neither those rebelling and organising nor those chasing and pursuing, echo the shape of tropes that would at least pushed the narrative into some sort of emotional contention. There is a last broadcast, a final call to agitate and a difficult last choice, but none of it is reliably earned. Events just kick into one another as opposed to spurring the next one.
Our view of the freedom struggle has been shaped by old faces. Though rebellion and disobedience usually begin young, our lasting image of the freedom struggle has been shaped by greying hair, puckered skin and the dismantled faces of the aged and the dying. This image has a stranglehold on centuries worth of stories and narratives waiting to be plucked out from underneath the heavy-handedness of the middle-aged chroniclers. What about the young, their problems, their inner conflicts, their personal moments of anguish, resentment and self-doubt? Rebellion after all starts at home and though Ae Watan Mere Watan knows what it is about, the way it goes about sharing feels more grandiose than grounded. As garbled and guileless as the propaganda Mehta cut across with some will, earnestness and imagination.
Ae Watan Mere Watan is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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