Children of War: Stark, compelling

Children of War
Starring: Raima Sen, Riddhi Sen, Rucha Inamdar, Victor Banerjee, Farooque Shaikh & Pawan Malhotra
Rated: 8/10
First comes the disclaimer. And then the reality. The stark, heart-wrenching, stinking, bloodsoaked and oppressive reality of war, the reality of subjugation, the reality of suppression, the reality of sub-human endeavour to crush a population through the oldest instrument of war — rape.
It’s a global instrument you have seen over the centuries, from the primitive times actually. In the modern world, it happened in the Bosnia-Serbia conflict and now is now being unfolded by Boko Haram Islamists in Nigeria who have abducted women and children for sexual slavery and race alteration as a tool of war. Back in 1971, when Bangladesh was being born, wombs were being enslaved with unheard of violence on captured Bangladeshi women at Pakistani concentration camps, worse than Hitler’s killing nooks. Director Mrityunjay Devvrat has captured it all and to such relentlessly unsettling impact that the assault on your senses does not dim even with the lulling music or the attrations of a picturesque rural locale.
The power of this film lies in the feeling of shame it chokes you with, not because the subject of the film is embarrassing but because it is too disturbing, too real and too vividly portrayed. Devvrat has produced a completely from-the-heart film on the genocide of men, women and children by Pakistan in the eye of the 1971 war of Bangladeshi war.
His main protagonists are a journalist and his beautiful wife (Raima Sen) separated by a Pakistani Armyman who rapes her relentlessly as the husband is made to watch. Raima’s story is as haunting as is her vacant ees and her controlled histrionics even though the cameos by Victor Banerjee and Farouqe Shaikh are no less.
The maniacal Malik, played to annoying perfection by Pawan Malhotra is so good with the badness that you question the director about killing him with so less pain, at least some of the pain that you see in the women of all ages being raped, murdered and used as child production machines should have come to this character.
In all, it is a stunning film made with meticulous attention to detail and even though you may accuse it of playing to the gallery with all that violence, there is no denying the fact that this happened and the film is no exaggeration.
Devvrat does not allow you to breathe, or for that matter, even turn away. It is one of the most compelling films that have come to the Indian screen in a long while. 
Source:  Sunday Pioneer, 18 May, 2014

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