Movie Review: Parzania

Parzania

Director: Rahul Dholakia

Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Sarika, Parzun Dastur

Music: Zakir Hussain.

Language: English (partly Gujarati).



Parzania is a traumatic journey of an event that shook the Nation with its ever haunting act of communal violence during Gujarat riots. It deals with the true story of a single Parsi family, but questions the whole community, every religion, every human and the whole Nation. It depicts with intelligence how religion can be a cause and search for solution of the same problem.

The story draws much of its power from the wisely modulated interpretation of the character of Cyrus- Naseeruddin Shah, being the father of the child lost in riots. Apart from him, Rahul superbly extracts the character of an emotional but strong mother from Sarika as well as innocence and sweetness from the two children. It tells a true story about a family, mother, father, and two kids living in Ahmedadbad. One of the kids is named Parzan, who has a dream of having his own world, own country, full of chocolates, ice creams, and happiness, called Parzania. After the Godhra incident, communal riot happens in Ahmedabad in which Parzan is lost. The movie deals with the search of their parents for their little child, and what all they face during this, the behavior of the police, government officials, their neighbors, Muslim friends. It tells how Gandhi values are in danger due to our new age politicians, in the world of Gandhi.


Its bold and gutsy cinematic showing fire all around, people running in curious, dead bodies all over, gangrene, not only adds up to its merits but gives Goosebumps and tears in eyes. The screenplay is good with strong dialogues being the main focus in many scenes, especially during the climax. The background score by Zakir Hussein is well gelled with the scenes.

Despite its strong subject, it becomes a bit slower at many points taking back the attained attention. Editing is at fault in some of the scene; especially sound editing, where the background score takes over the dialogues. Dialogues in such scenes are hardly heard. There are scenes where omni directional mikes are used, the environmental noise gets mixed up and becomes an obstruction against dialogues, either unidirectional mics should’ve been used or it should have been dubbed.

Some will definitely term it as a “one sided depiction of Hindu fundamentalism” although it does not particularly deals with Hindu or Muslim but revolves around a single family and tells how riots become a horrid, when the state keeps itself away from its very own responsibility of protecting its own people.

Rahul Dholakia exploits the actors to the fullest, and extracts the characters from inside them. He takes you on a ride to an eye widening journey with hard hitting dialogues and strong screenplay. Despite of some faults at editing and slow pace at some points, it scores as a director’s film, which succeeds in provoking strong reactions. It’s a film for the masses. It leaves you thinking at the end- why religion has taken over humanity?

- by Moina Khan
MCRC, Jamia Milia Islamia