In these perilous times, who knew it was still possible to make a film that has nationalism without the least bit of ‘hyper-ness’. Unlike Talvar, where director Meghna Gulzar consciously picks the side of the battle she’s on, there’s no ‘right’ side in Raazi. Just two sides that fight for the ideologies they’ve inherited, nay, that have been thrust upon them.
The tension, paranoia and hatred that gripped India and Pakistan before the 1971 war is but a part of the film, what the movie’s more focused on is the drama that takes place between the blurred lines. In the times of war, are your friends truly your friends? Is that spy double crossing the nation? And when the driving force of everything one does is triggered by love for their country, how does one fault it?
Vicky Kaushal plays the almost too-good-to-be-true husband to perfection in Raazi, but unfortunately, that’s all his role demanded. Shishir Sharma as Iqbal’s father keeps things real, while Soni Razdan as Sehmat’s mother Teji is… just there. It is Jaideep Ahlawat as Khalid Mir, the Indian intelligence agent who trains Alia, who stands out with his poker-faced acting.
Bhatt’s portrayal of ‘the spy who saves India’, however, will remind you of the Alia one sees at press shows and interviews. There’s the same exaggerated enunciation, discomfort and complete bewilderness at what she’s being made to do. As SOTY’s Shanaya, Bhatt’s enunciation punctuated with generous pouting might have seemed cute, but considering the magnitude of what Sehmat must accomplish, it begins to grate one’s nerves at times.
But perhaps that’s exactly why she was cast. Of all her contemporaries, it is Alia and her vulnerable, non-threatening demeanor that’s perfect to play the part of the innocuous girl-next-door who no one will suspect to be a spy.
Sehmat is established as just another young woman before her father, Hidayat Khan (Rajit Kapoor) masterfully ‘manipulates’ her into carrying on the family tradition of being a spy for India. In fact, Hidayat Khan’s induction of his ill-equipped and woefully gullible daughter into the world of covert intelligence is so well done, you almost feel like he’s right. That is till the training Sehmat has received, ensures the destruction of a family that bore her no ill-will. A family, who like her, are caught in the cross-fires of impending war; and whose destruction, in turn, breaks Sehmat.
At its core, Raazi is the story of two accidental lovers, of two families who put duty first, and of two countries united by a border and divided by circumstances.
Nobody is the ‘enemy’ in Gulzar’s Raazi, except the trickle-down hatred the fractured history of the two nations have passed on to its younger generation. And that right there is why Meghna Gulzar is the undisputed hero of the film. In a world ruled by myopic views, the reminder that the person at the other end of the target is human too, is the film’s biggest coup.
