Shorgul: Loud and unclear about what it wants

Cast: Jimmy Shergill, Ashutosh Rana, Sanjay Suri, Narendra Jha, Suha Gezen

Rated: 6/10

Those from Uttar Pradesh, be it in the 70s or today, would know what riots can do a city and its people. They tear you apart as a society, they kill without remorse and install the kind of fear in you that has no comparison.

What happened in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 was just the tip of what has happened in the narrow by-lanes of old Lucknow in the 70, 80s and even the early 90s.

So, Shorgul, though being touted as a reflection of the Muzaffarnagar carnage, could actually be a take on any Hindu-Muslim riot anywhere in India.

The blueprint is the same — there’s a small issue between the two brittle communities (in the case ofShorgul a misguided one-sided inter-community love story) that triggers the violence, often fanned by vested interests and politicians. The RAF steps in, there is shoot-at-sight, the city comes to a standstill and destruction is the all-pervasive snapshot.

Shorgul meanders through one such riot in the mango town of Malihabad (not a single orchard or stretch of mango trees is shown even for a split second) and lingers around a lot of polarisation, politicisation and pacifism talk with none making a distinct statement.

A Hindu boy has a silent crush on his next-door Muslim classmate who is betrothed and duly in love with a Muslim boy of her parent’s choice. Aspiring MP Om (Jimmy Shergill) is in need of polarised vote and with his wily uncle (looks like someone we all closely know) cashes in on the situation which ends in the death of the Hindu boy and eventually the girl’s fiancé too.

As Malihabad burns over this non-issue issue, the girl’s family is slaughtered and she finds shelter in the Hindu boy’s home with both communities baying for her blood at the instance of a Muslim cleric and a Hindu politician.

As the film and the town burn with many casualties, including the SP and the only voice of reason in Ashutosh Rana, a kind of town patriarch with more Muslim than Hindu followers, the film falls into the pit of self-destruction.

After a promising start which sets your pugnacity rolling, it so annoyingly falls into the pit of playing-to-the-gallery that it fails to save the blushes.

Shorgul is not a film in which item numbers could have been fitted in for the front benchers. It is not even a film meant for the front-benchers. It’s not a subject where romance should have found a background score. But the directors fail to see all this and ultimately tar their what-could-have-been a brilliant effort into a mishmash of commerciality. All they achieve is a shallow, neither here nor there movie on communal violence with a lot of riot words thrown at you for effect’s sake and a political gameplan which plays the purpose of igniting the mobs.

Chief Minister Mithlesh sounds so overtly similar to you-know-who and Om so much a byword from Muzaffarnagar that you feel that the garb of “Malihabad” is a mockery of the situation.

To measure Shorgul as a realistic film on the issue of riots, or a take-off on Muzaffarnagar violence that took more than 60 lives, would tag it as a misguided missile lacking in target, poise or seriousness. But as a normal Bollywood caper on any random riot, it is passable. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 03 July, 2016