Spoilers ahead…
The first thirty-odd minutes don’t cut very deep, but after this set-up, the film takes off.
The opening scenes of Ali Abbas Zafar’s Jogi, set in 1984, four months after Operation Blue Star, are right out of the mainstream-screenwriting textbook. Before you depict tragedy, give us the happy-family scenario. And so we meet Jogi, played by Diljit Dosanjh, and his joint family. They are having parathas for breakfast. The same sequence establishes the close-knit quality of the relationships, the fact that the father is due for retirement, the fact that Jogi’s older brother runs a shop, and also the inherent Sikh-ness of the protagonist. The first time we set eyes on Jogi, he is looking into a mirror, perfecting his turban, and he smiles when that perfection is attained. And then, Indira Gandhi is shot dead, and things change forever. We soon see why we needed that shot of Jogi and his turban.
You can read the rest of the review here:
https://www.galatta.com/hindi/movie/review/jogi/
And you can watch the video review here:
Copyright ©2022 GALATTA.
Madan
September 19, 2022
Nobody here watched this yet? Thought this was brilliant. A perfect blend of the romantic humanism of Shikara and the gritty no holds barred depiction of violence of Kashmir Files. There’s no flinching from the truth but rather than selling a new packet of lies, Jogi implores us to believe in love, hope and solidarity. I really don’t have much to say if people feel like chortling cynically at the very mention of those three words.
SPOILERS
At first, I was going to throw my hands up at the sudden insertion of the flashback angle and say Anmol Jamwal was absolutely right to call it out in his review. But then, as it unfolded, it ended up showing dimensions of Laali, that he is more willing to execute his evil orders than Ravinder also because he already has an axe to grind and is innately less tolerant of inter-religious marriages (even if it’s with a Sikh and not the-communities-that-must-not-be-named). And yet, it then evolves into his own redemption arc in a scene somewhat reminiscent of Arvind Swamy confronting the rival mobs and exhorting them to come to their senses. And so he does and at last he redeems himself. What the film ‘leaves out’ (not really, because this was beyond its context) is whether real life Ravinders and Laalis got any rewards for their bravery or were ostracized for going against the political tide (given that Rajiv actually won the largest mandate ever for saying when a big tree falls, the earth shakes and making light of the horrors inflicted on people who had nothing to do with the assassination of Indira). As you put it:
“In other words, it wasn’t just Indira Gandhi’s death that ‘othered’ the Sikhs. They were already treated as different.”
So…wouldn’t a real life Ravinder have been treated as ‘anti national’ or, as the Muricans say, ‘nigger lover’ in the aftermath of 1984? Considering that Muslims actually enjoyed their highest ever representation in Parliament in the 1984 Lokh Sabha, what happened to real life Kaleems as well? IF anybody lived in Delhi at that time and has connections to upright police officers, if any, from that time, I would love to hear insights on this as these events were before my time and for reasons of shameful political inconvenience were not properly documented outside a few left leaning outlets like Caravan and only written about by Sikh writers like Hartosh Singh Bahl.
LikeLike
Madan
September 19, 2022
The most brief and vague review I have read from Shubra Gupta. I don’t begrudge her the right to bash this or any film but she usually elaborates her precise objections with the film well. Here, all she has to offer by way of justifying her rating is: “But there does need to be a greater awareness and sensitivity when filmmakers touch upon the still-warm embers of those memories. In the way ‘Jogi’ uses Bollywoodian melodrama as its chief operating instrument, it serves only to undercut the tragedy, making it less than it was.”
https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/movie-review/jogi-movie-review-bollywood-melodrama-of-diljit-dosanjh-film-undercuts-tragedy-1984-riots-8155028/
Hard not to question if, as usual, the establishment closed ranks on this film because they would not like us to watch it.
LikeLike