Nagesh Kukunoor’s tackle certainly one of India’s darkest chapters scores with its restrained telling – Firstpost

Solid: Amit Sial, Sahil Vaid, Bagavathi Perumal, Danish Iqbal, Girish Sharma, Vidyut Gargi, Shafeeq Mustafa

Director: Nagesh Kukunoor

Language: Hindi

It’s exhausting to make political thrillers with out taking sides. However what if a filmmaker decides to essay the aftermath of a tragedy that shook the nation? Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor’s The Hunt is one such present that chronicles what occurred after the way it occurred. It’s based mostly on the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Shoojit Sircar’s Madras Cafe confirmed us the earlier than, Kukunoor focuses on the after. Regardless of being an internet sequence that permits makers to discover as a lot data as doable, Kukunoor wastes no time and jumps on to the Prime Minister’s speech at a crowded fare being blown into smithereens. The best way he levels these little photographs and leap cuts exhibits his grip over the fabric.

Even the response photographs don’t really feel theatrical or flimsy. The Hunt begins with an nameless telephone name to the Indian Excessive Fee in Colombo. The receptionist is requested if the Prime Minister is alive. Her rapid response and discomforting close-up exhibits how there’s going to be no room for theatrics right here. The opening credit too do a effective job of absorbing the viewers into the world the makers have created. Because the names start to roll, the newspaper like visuals with transferring photographs put together us for the calamity within the sequence forward. It’s based mostly on the e book Ninety Days by Anirudhya Mitra. And Kukunoor chooses actors over stars. He needs vulnerability over vainness. He needs lesser seen faces to change into extra mentioned names.

It’s difficult to return in time however there’s positively one thing charming and quaint about nostalgia. When Amit Sial, who performs D.R. Kaarthikeyan (IGP CRPF) is knowledgeable concerning the assassination, the subsequent scene sees him in entrance of a tv watching the information. That was the time when media was but to dive into cacophony and decay for the greed for TRPs. The best way the reporter reads out the information about Rajiv Gandhi, you want to take heed to her once more purely as a result of how composed she’s. In reality, everybody barely raises its voice within the sequence. Even when a personality tells Sial that is going to essentially the most difficult time for him, he calmly responds by saying he’ll select his personal workforce.

Kukunoor at instances has faltered as a filmmaker however his fondness or fetish for slow-burn is simply as contemporary. He jumps to the purpose swiftly however strikes forward with the narrative with composure. One of the best instance is his exceptional sports activities drama Iqbal that completes 20 years this 12 months. Even the turgid 8×10 Tasveer established the thriller across the plot and took its personal candy time to unveil all its playing cards. And with The Hunt, the filmmaker’s ambitions have to be lauded. It’s a daring and precarious topic. It includes an enormous of a political determine’s assassination. It’s fascinating how the makers refuse to hide or change names and provides them fictional tales. There are open references to IPKF and LTTE. In a single key scene, Sial says how the Gandhi household is really cursed.

It’s additionally becoming that Kukunoor and his writers Sriram Rajan and Rohit Banawlikar go for a streaming format to inform this bone-chilling story of a darkish chapter in Indian historical past. However they don’t deal with the topic as a documentary. It unfolds like a whodunnit. We’ve been instructed the way it occurred. Now the SIT has to determine why it occurred, and by whom it occurred. We’ve heard this booming background rating earlier than that’s meant so as to add a tinge of urgency to the plot, however the best way all of it unfolds retains the present going. And such tales want conversational therapy. There are infinite discussions and questions that pop up among the many characters.

It should even be attention-grabbing to see the response The Hunt receives. The Rajiv Gandhi assassination is a chapter that unfolded 34 years in the past. The pages of historical past books have been lengthy forgotten as we moved in direction of our telephone screens. It’s additionally a horror that hardly resurfaces on social media. We’ve faint recollections of studying concerning the former Prime Minister. Attending to know concerning the brutality of his dying now looks like going by means of blended feelings. Ought to we describe this present as a brush with nostalgia? Is it a historical past lesson we should have been taught with extra element? Or ought to we deal with this as one other whodunnit? As said above- We all know what occurred. Now inform us the way it occurred and who made it occur. Take your choose.

Ranking: 3 (out of 5 stars)

The Hunt – The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case is now streaming on SonyLIV