Pippa Remarkably Unsentimental Look At War

Pippa(Prime Video)

Rating:****
 The  tendency to glorify the ravages of  war, is neatly avoided in Raja Menon’s Pippa which opens with  a lengthy prologue explaining who or what ‘Pippa’ is. The amphibian  battle tank will show up  later when the live action at the warfront kicks in.

Warning: don’t expect too much  bullets  and bloodshed in this war film. This is not your Bridge Over the  River  Kwai, Border  kind of  violence-torn war saga.

Based  on  the real experiences  of  war hero Brigadier Balram Singh Mehta  from   the book The Burning Chaffees,  Pippa takes its time to get to the point: there is no point to shedding blood at the border. Sure, India  helped East Pakistan in  creating Bangladesh. But at  what cost? Was  all the bloodshed worth it?

Imagined in colours of valour that do not favour violence, Pippa is  a well-told story of a family  of siblings engaged in the 1971 war . The pace is  languorous  and  unhurried. But the payoff is  substantial. We come  away from  the war  saga with a tear in our eye and no  blood on  our hands.

The  performances  are stubbornly laidback. Ishaan  Khattar has  the author-backed role. He makes the best of the opportunity. But is betrayed by his boyish personality. Priyanshu Painyuli is  well cast as the upright  committed  sibling soldier. Perhaps  he should have been cast  in the title role.

 The performance that caught my attention  was Kamal Sadanah as  Sam Manekshaw.  It is a warm winking tribute to the Field Marshall.

A R Rahman’s music  has lately been sounding lamentably lackluster.In Pippa the music and songs are  not just disappointing, they are unwanted.

Director  Raja Krishna Menon(whose earlier credits include the taut and gripping Airlift) takes  his own time to gather the plot into a compendium  of collective war images. This is not an upscale war film like  J P Dutta’s Border or Farhan Akhtar’s  Lakshya. The stakes in Pippa are  not that high.