Kesari Review: Akshay Kumar's new nationalist drama lasts two hours too long



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It is at this time of year that Akshay Kumar, of the famous Canadian pbadport, feels the need twice a year to prove his love for the nation.

In Anurag Singh Kesari Kumar, is a turbaned soldier working under the British payroll, but fighting in one way or another for the Azazaadi of India.

Inspired by the true story of the Battle of Saragarhi in 1897, a band of 21 soldiers from the 36th Sikh Regiment of the Indian Indian Army escaped 10,000 Pathan soldiers, of Kesari . -life story and transforms it into a jingoistique drama using bbad and dated narration techniques.

First of all, it's never clear whether Parineeti Chopra is an existing wife deceased before Kumar, or just a fantasized bride. She continues to emerge mysteriously and has absolutely nothing to contribute, except for some unbearably sober lines here and there for comic and romantic relief.

Secondly, the first half of the movie is totally useless. Kumar is transferred from a key outpost to Saragarhi (considered so unimportant that they called it a post office). Once there, he spends considerable time building a camaraderie with the soldiers, who are unruly and brutal. The lines here are drab, lack spirit or wit and do absolutely nothing to explore the humanity or psyche of men on the brink of a potential war.

Even when the battle finally breaks out, a series of strange things happen. A soldier starts a song, the characters speak in twisted metaphors, and all of this, we are supposed to believe that the bloodthirsty Pathans are patiently waiting outside.

And like any good patriotic movie that reminds you of the sacrifice of a soldier, each character dies first, dies, then springs to life to let out the last words super emo.

Singh, known for his successes in Punjabi such as Jatt and Juliet and Disco Singh has a very 90s style of creation. There is absolutely no subtlety here (there is literally a drum battle between Afghan Pathans and Indian Sikhs, where the Kumar dhol manages to silence the sound of the other 100.)

The Battle of Saragarhi was important and it is good to remember ] Kesari is a blatant subversion of a historical act that serves a specific ideology by fueling the current nationalist narrative of badization of violence and celebration of war.

A wave of Islamaphobia engulfs the world, not to mention India, disturbing imagery. and the colors – fair Sikhs dressed in saffron brutally slaughtered by the Muslims brandishing the cold flag, barbarians and barbarians – fall precisely into the ideological canon of Hindutva.

The Muslim characters of the film receive no nuance, they are bloody-letting Muslims ravage the Sikhs, almost secular.

Kumar's Ishar Singh is so noble that he asks one of his troop members (the lonely good Pathan, for safety's sake, to make sure that he gives water to the wounded soldiers on both sides of the battle.

In an earlier scene, he participates in the construction of a mosque in a nearby village and commits the others to

And what is the reaction of the Afghans?

In the decisive battle, which is a visibly exhausting, emotionally painful and extremely monotonous sequence, Kumar is preparing to slaughter a young Pathan, who does not seem to He let him go, even saying, "Oh, you're a kid."

Moments later, he's the same kid who stabbed Kumar.

Nice.

For a film with a certificate of AU, the film is very, very violent.

As if the fact that 10,000 Pathans take over 21 Sikh soldiers were not enough to show the first in a terrible day, the visual of an Indian soldier stabbed by 10 to 15 swords persists to guarantee that the demonic methods of Muslims do not fail.

These scenes, intertwined before and during the war, only reinforce the contrast between two communities and send a deeply polarizing message to a difficult moment in world politics, where the majority forces are tearing our society apart. secular fabric.

Kesari (which translates as saffron, happens to be also the color of the ruling party), could have made a bitter war drama if she had not chosen to paint the The war was conducted so broadly and attempted to humanize it.

But the film's visual grammar reveals its politics and the policy is terribly disturbing – it's an exploitative drama that encloses an existing populist sentiment at a time when we should be conta do not fuel hatred.

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