Film: "Red Alert: The War Within"
Director: Anant Mahadevan
Cast: Suniel Shetty, Sameera Reddy, Ashish Vidyarthi, Vinod Khanna, Seema Biswas, Ayesha Dharker, Bhagyashree
Rating: 3 & 1/2
Arundhati Roy called their fight the single greatest resistance against oppression in the world, while our prime minister, the deceptively genial Manmohan Singh, called them the greatest internal security threat. Between these extreme reports of their bringing rural-equality and their massacres, what's the truth about the Maoists or Naxalites?
What is their motivation, and why has this movement of the 1960s recently gathered momentum for such extreme views to develop. Between this hero-worship of Roy and the hyperbole of Singh, lies "Red Alert".
When Narasimha (Shetty) gets caught in the crossfire between police and Maoists, he is rescued and taken along by Maoists. Here he lives among the outlaws and become one of them. However, a farmer cannot really come to terms with killing people and he is at loggerheads with the Maoist group's leader Velu (Vidhyarthi).
Through the eyes of Narasimha "Red Alert" shows us the life of the 'red' rebels who live and fight in the jungles. It paints their motivations, their weaknesses, their compassion and brutality, while never once patronising the rebels, the police, or the viewer. Everything in the film, like in life, is grey.
The Maoist movement began as a resistance against the oppression of landlords in the 1960s and today it is a violent resistance against the new landlords, government backed MNCs and national companies who want to make profit at the cost of the very people living there and of the environment, not to mention the nation if you consider deeper economics.
Fighting them are the armed forces of the country, the police and paramilitary forces. How then have they been able to survive the might of the state? The film gives examples of how they often bring justice and fair wages to the rural populace, leading to their support.
Instead, because of the use by security forces of various injudicious methods like 'rape' and burning of villages as a weapon against Maoists, they have only further alienated the people who have found no recourse but to become guerrillas themselves. "Red Alert" depicts this reality with precision.
Director Anant Mahadevan has done a commendable job of accumulating a motley group of great actors who do not fail the story and their parts. The lead, Suniel Shetty, however, looks like a rank amateur pitted against this ensemble of actors like Seema Biswas, Ayesha Dharker, Ashish Vidhyarthi and Vinod Khanna. Even Nasseruddin Shah in a two minute cameo as a drunkard soars, telling us once more as to why many worldwide consider him a living legend.
The dialogues and treatment are crisp and sympathetic to both the sides. The details of Maoist movement and modus operandi are well in tune with known facts, and so is that of the security forces.The main drawback of the film, however, is that it often ends up becoming a mere document of these, rather than a cinematic reinterpretation. Though, even in this it does a commendable job, interweaving multiple plots and characters believably. In the end, the film also tries to elucidate a third way of peace and prosperity for all. But it seems more utopic than real as it relies on the good nature of otherwise greedy Indians.
Yet it is a triumph that in such charged times, the film not only got made but found a release. Hats off to every filmmaker like Anant Mahadevan who dares to venture to cinematic realms few dare go. Based on a true story, it has been directed by Anant Mahadevan and also stars Naseeruddin Shah, Vinod Khanna, Seema Biswas, Gulshan Grover, Bhagyashree, Ashish Vidyarthi and Ayesha Dharker.
"Probably for the first time in Indian cinema you will get to hear dialogues which are actually spoken lines and not fabricated. We did extensive research. My writer Aruna Raje and I downloaded a lot of interviews between the Maoists and cops from the Internet. Every line they spoke was volatile and we ended up using those lines," Mahadevan told IANS. Suniel, on the other hand, condemned the increasing Maoist violence but insisted that they are not terrorists. "Naxals are often helpless people who have been exploited. One cannot just eliminate or deal with them harshly because they are our own people and not terrorists," he said. "Red Alert" revolves around Narasimha (Suniel), a poor farm labourer who desperately needs money to fund the education of his children. Somehow he finds himself in the midst of the Maoist movement working as a cook.
He soon graduates to weapons training, shootouts and kidnappings. Narasimha's life becomes more complicated when a confrontation with the group leader (Ashish Vidyarthi) turns his world upside down and he is caught between the law and the militants.
Mahadevan was inspired to make the movie after reading about the plight of a farmer who fell victim to the Maoist movement. He insists that the film is based on impartial reports on the long drawn battle between the government and the Maoists.
"It's based on absolutely unbiased reports. The government and the Maoists, both have to take the criticism and responsibility for what is happening. It's a very fair and unbiased view on the consequences faced by a common man," he said. Added Seema: "Through this film we are not taking any sides. We are not supporting anyone because we ourselves don't know, who is right and who is wrong. We are just telling a story and putting across an issue that needs to be dealt with."
Veteran actor Mithun Chakraborty turned down a role in the movie, as he felt that the original Maoist dialogues used in the film would make the viewers sympathise with the rebels and therefore make it an anti-establishment movie. On the other hand, Sameera Reddy, known for her glamourous image, went through complete makeover for the movie. "A transition from a simple girl to a Naxalite and picking up guns and fighting was difficult. It was also not easy to shoot in the jungles," she said. The film has travelled to the Stuttgart Film Festival, the South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF), the International Film Festival of India and Berlin Film Festival. It picked up various awards on the festival circuit.
Shot and dubbed in four languages - English, Hindi, Telugu and Chattisgarhi, the film also has a Bengali version in the pipeline. Considering its niche market, it is to be seen if this one manages to raise some awareness among the audience about the issue.
Naseeruddin Shah has clearly chosen cameos for his belated forte. In the final minutes of this film (like the opening sequence of Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti), he randomly saunters on to the screen, this time, to express his audience’s most urgent sentiment: a long-drawn yawn.
A poor man (Sunil Shetty) walks in to his house. It turns out they were classmates once. How many years Naseer may have flunked school to match Shetty’s years is not known. But his poor guest is in serious trouble: caught between the Maoist army, and the state police.
SunielThis Andhraite fellow (Shetty), the hero, a reasonably gymmed out, toned up man for a BPL (below poverty line) bloke, was hijacked by Naxalites in one of their combat operations. The outlawed group promised to pay off this cook’s personal debts, if he took up guns for them. Killing wasn’t his field. He wanted to go home to his wife and kids. Money remained his issue. He had to bump off the Maoist platoon chief (Ashish Vidyarthi) to finally win his freedom. Now the Naxals are after him. So are the local police. He doesn’t know where to go. Neither does the film. But that’s not new; for the film, that is.
The movie’s set in the angry, underdeveloped forest belts of Andhra Pradesh, one of the many flashpoints of an ongoing civil war, better known as the Naxalite movement in India. There’s nothing civil about a war that’s kept a third of the country hostage to recurring attacks and violence, compounding a problem it professes to solve. The subject certainly deserves a film, and many more enquiries. What you cannot shy away from then is a personal take. Opinions are never right or wrong. Govind Nihalani’s Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa (1998) was sympathetic to Naxals at its birthplace in Bengal. Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005) favourably touched upon its origins in the ‘70s.
The contemporary view on this screen is relatively spot-on: the camera neatly pans across honestly chosen locations. The vision is but peripheral, and the viewpoint, entirely missing, as we follow a group of armed revolutionaries in fits and starts settling scores with a democratic state, they feel, has failed them entirely.
One of the group commanders, who looks suspiciously like the author Pankaj Mishra, says reading books is all he does: “Words have the power that guns don't.” The words don’t match his own actions. His boss suggests the difference between terrorism and revolution as one that’s directed against the “state”, and the other, against the “system”.
He doesn’t figure for us a difference between state and the system itself. He and his comrades, many of them women (Seema Biswas, Ayesha Dharker, Sameera Reddy), merely go around blowing up police stations and other public works, in the name of their neglected brothers.
At some point even Osama’s means are mixed up with Maoists’ for an intended message. Good lord. The film’s complex subject then remains at once its only merit, and its immediate failing. A naïve cook (Sunil Shetty) among many crooks, state, or non-state gun-totters, is no story either. You feel for neither, because you’re not meant to. The movie, dull on drama, doesn’t take a stand. The backdrop is its only purpose, and doubles up for its skeletal plot. The picture probably started out with, “Let’s make a movie on Naxalites. Art picture. No songs!" The rest should follow.
I suppose you may as well go back to popular narrative that plays out Maoist attacks each day as some chicken-egg catfight between bleeding heart liberals (Arundhati Roy), and a ruthlessly heartless Indian state (P Chidambaram). It’s at least reductive enough to make for a good read, or watch, from a distance, of course.
