Batwara 1947 movie review: Sunny Deol is let down by dated, banal storytelling

The last solid film from Santoshi was Khakee (2004); everything that came after has been a slide.

But with Batwara 1947, which began life as ‘Lahore 1947’, I was hoping for a little more, for a couple of reasons. It is based on the celebrated Asghar Wajahat 1989 play, Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya Vo Jamya Ei Nai, one of the most humane accounts of Partition, highlighting the futility of it all; and it has Shabana Azmi playing Mai, the Hindu woman left behind in her Lahore haveli, which is allotted to the Mirza family, who cross over after their home was burnt down by rioters.

The central conflict plays out inside the home and outside. The Mirza family — Sikandar (Sunny Deol), his wife Hamida (Preity Zinta), his son (Karan Deol), and their young daughter — tries to face down a stubborn old woman, Durgawati (Shabana Azmi), who refuses to leave. She is waiting for her son and his family, and no one in the mohalla has the courage to tell her that they will never return, having perished in the riots. The tension builds, pumped up by a lumpen fellow (Abhimanyu Singh), who goes about making dire threats against those ‘kaafirs’ who do puja, and celebrate Diwali.

Santoshi’s film, in contentious making for a few years, is finally out now, at a time when August 14 has been termed as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day. It should have felt like a balm on fissured souls if only it had been contemporised without losing its essence. But while its messaging is even more relevant in these times, the storytelling is dated and banal.

To find a light touch in a subject like this is tough, so when a hand pump is referenced, you smile. The bits featuring a poet-type (Ali Fazal) also tries for a lighter vein. But the rest of it is the usual stagey dialoguing – here are your bad-and-good Hindus, and there your bad-and-good-Muslims. Sunny Deol still roars satisfactorily (no hand pumps are hurt, though), Preity Zinta does her part, and Shabana Azmi is in great form, landing on the exact sur between well-judged theatricality and melodrama.

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The message is loud and clear: no religion is evil, only humans are; nafrat can be conquered through pyaar, siyasat se mazhab ko na milao; and above all, maanvata se bada koi dharam nahin. But they come as a listicle, instead of making you feel.

Batwara 1947 movie cast: Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta, Ali Fazal, Shabana Azmi, Abhimanyu Singh, Karan Deol
Batwara 1947 movie director: Rajkumar Santoshi
Batwara 1947 movie rating: Two stars