Post Pahalgam’s Savage Carnage,  Ground Zero’s Chilling Revisitation Into The Valley Of Death

Post Pahalgam’s Savage Carnage,  Ground Zero’s  Chilling Revisitation Into The Valley Of Death

Rating:*** ½

Some irresponsible  reviews of this important  film have spoken of  how the  film doesn’t  provide  enough entertainment. It is like  saying Gone  With The Wind doesn’t have enough wind in its sail. Some cinematic  experiences  need to be judged  beyond  what we define as “entertainment”

 And what  a  heinous crime against all  humane yardsticks  it would be if a film on the monstrous  aftermath of terror attacks would be entertaining.  Yuck yuck yuck!

Except for a weak central  performance  by Emran Hashmi, and  ridiculously underwritten roles  for the two female  leads, Ground Zero strikes  all the right chords from the word go. In one of its  opening sequences , an affable  BSF jawaan in a  busy area of Kashmir,  is  shot pointblank in his head.

One minute he is  laughing and joking with his colleague, buying Kit Kat  chocolate  from a  roadside shopkeeper who refuses to charge money(the  jawaan  puts the money into a jar for Eid donation)… the  next moment he  is  lying in a pool of blood.

The suddenness  and finality of  violence is   doubly underlined in the opening sequence by the writers Sanchit Gupta and Priyadarshee Srivastava. And that’s the way  it should be. Ground Zero never tampers  with the truth,never  bows down to massy gimmicks.  Shot on location,  the  narrow gullies  and open verdant spaces of  Kashmir never looked more forlorn and fearsome.

The last time the Kashmir Valley looked so sinister was  in  Applause Entertainment’s OTT  series Tanaav.

 Ripping a  chapter  out of the bloodied  history of militancy ,director Tejas Prabha Vijay Deoskar re-imagines the events  in the life  of  BSF officer Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey(Hashmi) who led the operation against terrorist Ghazi Baba  in 2003.

The  balance  between the actual  events and  their cinematic interpretation is well preserved.  The narration neither over-demonizes  the militants  nor  mythologizes  the  BSF soldiers. There are  no superfluous songs of valour and patriotism, no overt flag-waving. The  narration moves in a businesslike tone, giving us no  opportunity to feel  we are being manipulated either way.

 The  core of the operations  is the relationship that  Dubey forms  with  a young impressionable Kashmiri boy Hussain, played with  hearbreaking vulnerability  by Mir Mohammed Mehroos. It is  a  tangled complex highly dangerous liaison  that puts the  boy  in immense danger. This is  where the film tells  it like it is: when a cleansing  process takes place,there are bound to be fallouts.

  Ground Zero  gets  it right most of the time. The  director seems uneasy doing the family bits. We shall leave that to Sooraj Barjatya.