Will Shoojit Sircar’s decade old Madras Cafe be greenlit today?

The film turns a decade old today, but it stands unwavering as a testament to the kind of audacious cinema that is gradually fading from the silver screen. Few Hindi films, if any, have explored the subject of the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka and the failure of the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Yet, Shoojit delves into this crucial and controversial issue with the ease of a seasoned journalist delivering hard facts during prime time, which again is an increasingly rare sight.

Madras Cafe offers an intricate narrative of India’s involvement in the Sri Lankan civil war, which ultimately led to the harrowing mass genocide of the Tamil ethnic minority and became a catalyst for the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In an era where the ‘josh’ is always high and we are inundated with nationalist films which are only about glorious victories, Madras Cafe depicts the pyrrhic nature of war, while marking the failures in red.

Shoojit refuses to go down the path of arrogant bravado, instead offering a stark depiction of how a corrupt cog in the machinery can derail a nation’s critical mission, tamper its global reputation, put its ex-prime minister’s life at risk and, most importantly of all, take the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. And he does this through the character of alcohol chugging Balakrishnan (based on a real-life person KV Unnikrishnan), who took bribes in exchange for top secret information about India’s mission in Sri Lanka.

Conventionally, when a nation’s fate hangs in the balance on the big screen, a charismatic hero emerges to single-handedly save the day. While Madras Cafe features a massy star, John Abraham, it avoids portraying him as a messiah. Instead, the film opens with John’s character drowning his sorrows in alcohol, recounting the tale of his inability to protect the ex-prime minister. Also to his credit, Shoojit didn’t succumb to the temptation to narrate an alternate history, Inglorious Basterds-style. Instead, he firmly concluded the film with the chilling assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, accompanied by a sombre note acknowledging the countless innocent lives lost during the unending civil conflict.

Madras Cafe is a poignant work of cinema that needs to be celebrated and promoted, much like other films of its ilk that would likely struggle to see the light of day if released in today’s climate. Some of these include Anubhav Sinha’s Mulk, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti, Pranav Singh’s Shorgul, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider and Hansal Mehta’s Shahid.

In his statement, Anurag Kashyap added, “The things that we need and the things that are done are two different things.” But these ferocious pieces of cinema proudly exist, offering an escape from the cacophony of hatred. All we have to do is put on our headphones and “shush” the noise. After all, their versions seem truer than our present reality.