Children Of War Movie Review
The title is provocative and stirring, the kind that has a resounding effect if voiced in a hushed tone. It doesn’t promise a bed of roses, and debutant director Mrityunjay Devvrat leaves no stone unturned (literally) to chronicle one of the most brutal genocides in human history.
The real tragedy of the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) is often lost amidst mentions of more quantitative war crimes like the Holocaust (flimsy commercial efforts like Gunday add to the confusion), but the 9-month-long struggle boasts of little-known atrocities as alarming as any. The filmmaker takes a regular separation saga of a Bengali journalist (Sengupta) and his wife (Sen), and turns it into an uncompromising, relentless, soul-sucking tale of despair and darkness.
There is no time for basic emotions like longing and sorrow, after she is put into a concentration-campstyled prison with many other ‘fertile’ women, run by an Islam extremist Pakistani officer (Malhotra). His mission is to rape and impregnate them, and create an entire generation of nationless children. No further description is needed.
Malhotra here constructs possibly the most vile and deranged screen antagonist in recent times. His rendition is spine-chilling, combining the deceptive deviousness of Hans Landa (Inglourious Basterds), cold-blooded ruthlessness of Amon Goeth (Schindler’s List) and scowlish arrogance of Scar (Lion King). He engages and terrifies even in a one-shot sequence where he drunkenly converses solely with his gun. The only respite from this carnage of torture is a parallel story of two orphaned Bangla teens struggling towards the Indian border to seek refuge. This track is the only mildly escapist section that forays into the abstract to portray psychological damage. There is a touch of Hans Zimmer to the music Devvrat uses to dramatise bloodshed, and the effect it has is overwhelming, even at the cost of its indulgent length (150 minutes). This may seem exploitative at times, but so are the subject and its characters.
There is an inescapable loss of innocence all around, much like in today’s world, where lines between revenge and justice are blurred.
The magnitude of brutality and shock is always amplified if preceded by brighter times, but in Children Of War, there is rarely any cause for hope or joy and sadness is only succeeded by further despair. I recommend its power to feel alive, but this isn’t for the faint-hearted.
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