In a post-Dhurandhar world, Sriram Raghavan stages an anti-war rebellion with Ikkis

Homecoming very much defines the film. Brigadier Madan Lal Khetarpal (Dharmendra) returns to Lahore for the centenary celebrations of his college. Born in Sargodha, in what is now Pakistan, he traverses landscapes scarred by history, visiting his ancestral home, now inhabited by a Pakistani family. The casting of Dharmendra is itself a layered self-aware statement: he, too, was born into a land later torn apart by Partition, carrying memories of childhood, first loves, and schooldays all stolen by a tragedy that left scars both intimate and collective. His presence resonates further because he was last of a generation of superstars, (alongside the likes of Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, and Raj Kapoor), whose life bore witness to that violence, thus infusing their cinema with a consciousness that weighed grief and humanity equally. With his passing, we have lost that living bridge to a world beyond divisions. Ikkis emerges, in this sense, at a precise moment, where the old guard fades, and the new guard, led by films like Dhurandhar, envisions a naya Bharat.

Ikkis is Dharmendra’s swan song.

So, if Madan Lal experiences that not much has changed (like the tree in the backyard of the house, he once called home), yet so much has, and despite it all, he feels equally at home (as even Jaideep Ahlawat’s character, Brigadier Nisar, tells his daughter, “he is home”), his grandson, Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal (Agastya Nanda), also witnesses a similar realisation. While serving in the 1971 Indo-Pak war, as he reaches Pakistan in his tank, the 21-year-old is struck by how strangely similar the land looks to his own homeland. It instantly recalls the craftsmanship of someone like Yash Chopra, (who returned again and again to the tragedy of Partition in his art), and that crucial point in Veer-Zaara, when Veer sings a proud anthem of his homeland, Zaara simply replies with, “Yaha bhi wahi sham hai, wahi savera; Aisa hi desh hai mera jaisa desh hai tera.” And here, instantly, the familiar and the foreign collapse into one. On the battlefield, Arun is struck by many such realisations, like the moment where he watches his own colleagues fall, and later, when a journalist asks him what it is like to be at war, he finds no words.

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By juxtaposing the two timelines, one where Arun goes about being a martyr in the war, and another where Madan Lal visits his homeland, Raghavan not only questions the futility of war, but also, in a sense, gives us two films for the price of one. Arun’s story contains everything one expects from a war drama, yet Raghavan restrains it from becoming overtly emotional. There is a methodical care about how this track is filmed. Unlike other filmmakers who might incite jingoism to show the stakes, he understands that the battlefield is anything but a stage for cheap thrills. Unlike other filmmakers who might inflate heroism for spectacle, he understands and honors the weight of a soldier’s labour and sacrifice without sentimentality. His focus is on the journey of a boy who longed all his life to be on the battlefield, and, when he finally arrived, witnessed the catastrophe it caused. Through these choices, Raghavan simply asks: when so much on the battlefield is determined by fortune, beyond your control and calling, what, then, constitutes true heroism?

But more importantly, he asks: have we grown so drunk on violence that even a stroke of peace leaves us intimidated? Have we fed our hearts with so much hatred that humanity has nowhere to dwell? Have we grown so accustomed to the sight of children getting massacred, houses destroyed, fields drowned in blood, that aren’t we ashamed of being indifferent? Generational traumas may never fully heal, but perhaps they can, at least temporarily, be soothed by a hug. Two moments, again, in particular, echo this ethos. Right before the interval, a former Pakistani soldier (Deepak Dobriyal) bristles at the presence of Madan Lal in his country. He hurls abuses, spilling years of accumulated anger. And in response, all Madan Lal offers is a hug. A hug that heals more than a bullet could ever break. Later, when Madan Lal sits with his childhood friend (Asrani) to reminisce, the friend, battling Alzheimer’s, cannot even grasp that borders have created divisions which can no longer be bridged. So, rightfully, both Raghavan and Asrani ask: “What happened to the country?”