Faraaz: Hansal Mehta needs to stop using his characters as a mouthpiece and let his films do the talking

The point being, it is possible to make the audience root for archetypes, but for that, filmmakers must have confidence in the viewers’ inherent decency. Mehta isn’t sure of this, which is probably why he insists, these days, on making the most obvious points in a strangely ham-fisted way. It’s almost as if Faraaz, and also his equally well-intentioned recent short film Baai, are both targeted not at liberal audiences, but at people who exist outside of the filmmaker’s own echo chamber.

In recent months, there has been a noticeable increase in movies that basically function as a mouthpiece for their directors. It’s one thing to make personal films, but it’s a different thing altogether to use films as an extension of Twitter. These movies tend to feature characters who’ve been stopped in their tracks and commanded to verbalise the anxieties of the people who’ve written them, in scenes that are invariably rather self-congratulatory.

In Anurag Kashyap’s otherwise solid Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, Alaya F’s character unleashes a tirade about the state of the world that might as well have been delivered by Kashyap himself; it contains all the anger of his earlier work, but also reveals how he has evolved into a more empathetic person. “Jis duniya mein log bhook se mar rahe hain, jeene ke paise nahi hain, jahan Antarctica mein Dilli ki garmi pad rahi ho, aur Baghdad mein barf gir rahi ho, jahan yeh duniya rahegi ke nahi koi guarantee nahi hai, wahan sabse bada problem hai mohabbat aur music,” she says.

This monologue is the mission statement of Kashyap’s movie, but in Faraaz, the mouthpiece scene comes right at the end, when our hero’s grieving mother honours him before a large gathering. “Mere chhotu ne saabit kiya ke har jang jeetne ke liye nahi ladi jaati. Kuch iss liye ladi jaati hain taaki duniya yaad rakhe ke jab zulm ho raha tha, uske khilaaf koi khada tha. Woh officers khade they, mera chhotu khada tha (My son has proved that wars are not fought for victory. Some are fought so that the world can remember that somebody stood against injustice. My son and those officers stood up against injustice).” The movie stops just short of adding, “Aur Hansal Mehta khada tha.”

The violence shown on screen in Faraaz — both literal and ideological — is essentially a shock-and-awe tactic used as a deflection from the truth: that the only thing that the movie has to offer about a very serious geopolitical issue is the rather tired ‘not-all-Muslims’ argument. But by using a minority community’s internal conflicts in a foreign country as a metaphor for the rise of the right-wing in India, Mehta shies away from confronting the truth head-on. In that way, Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat at least had the good sense to highlight the absurdity of man-made conflicts in a world that is dying before our eyes.

Of course, making any sort of political movie in India, however feeble, isn’t easy these days, but consider this, the Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes got its (very similar) points across without ruffling a feather. The problem with Faraaz is that it wants to have its cake and eat it too. Not only does the movie want some sort of medal from the liberal left for being ‘courageous’, it also wants mainstream appreciation, presumably from the same majority whose false sense of victimhood it is calling out. And this is evident in its masala sensibilities.

But as we all know, mainstream movies — everywhere, not just in India — can’t afford to offend large sections of the audience. Which is probably why Faraaz makes sure to not step on anybody’s toes. But Mehta still gets called names by idiots online, so why pull punches at all, why shoot off somebody else’s shoulders?

In fact, both its central characters are religious martyrs in a way. Both the hero Faraaz and the villain Nibras, played by the very talented nepo babies Zahan Kapoor and Aditya Rawal, died fighting for their beliefs — equally flawed as those beliefs were in the other’s eyes. But this isn’t some grand metaphor about how organised religion is caught in some kind of civil war. Things get truly out of hand when Faraaz, who stood up to Nibras, begins to spout counter-doctrine at him, and seconds later, offers prayers alongside him. While it’s heartening to see two people with opposing views share a quiet moment together — it’s like John Wick and the Italian villain from the second movie calling a ceasefire and having a chit-chat instead — but activist-minded movies such as Faraaz need to be more confrontational, not in terms of action, but themes. Like Mehta’s own Shahid, and even Aligarh — both are primarily character studies that evoke fury by appealing to your humanity, not by lecturing you on what is right or wrong.

By suggesting that anybody can be turned into a zealot, regardless of their background and the environment that they grew up in, the movie skirts around the real issue. The problem isn’t with any one particular religion; the problem, instead, is with blind faith. But Faraaz isn’t about blind faith, is it? It’s a hyper-specific movie about a real-life historical event with built-in cultural specificities that prevent it from ever feeling like an archetype for anything else. It’s a film about the banality of evil, but it’s presented almost like a Banshees of Inisherin-style conflict between two Bandra boys.