Cogito Ergo Sum

Wow! What is this? Aparna and a Movie Review? Any beach has moved to Bangalore!?

Nothing is impossible. People can change often for the better. Not that “A Wedneday” is the best movie I've ever watched, but it is the time to write a movie review on one of the better lot. So, this is my primordial post on a movie.

First of all, let us have a peep into a few co-incidences related to “A Wednesday.” I impulsively decided to watch it on a Wednesday (07-01-09) with my DVD player. I was planning to put a post on the following Saturday, and for obvious reasons I posted a short post before that. Now, today-being a(nother) Wednesday- is apt for a post on its namesake movie. The biggest co-incidence is that the 26-11-2008 (Mumbai Terrorists attack day) was also a Wednesday, and the movie was released, watched and relished much before that!!! My purpose of writing the review is not to rate the movie, but to analyze it objectively. The movie conveys several messages to the responsible people.

The movie is satirical. It starts (mainly) with a scene where a man (Naseeruddin Shah) comes to a police station to give a complaint on his lost wallet. Then he goes to the rest room, leaves his bag there and leaves the place. Actually, later in the movie police would search for the bomb (upon being informed of its presence by the same man) and find it. In my view, this bomb should have got blasted and killed all those police. Call me ruthless, cold-blooded, barbarous; use whatever adjectives you love to use. The truth remains that those bunch of morons do not deserve to live. Their profession is to be vigilant and they miserably fail to notice that this man had a black bag while going inside and did not carry it while coming out. What protection can these people provide to the public?

The scenes where this man sits with his gadgets and eatables and keeps making phone calls are scary. He tells the Police Commissioner that he has kept 5 bombs in different locations of Mumbai. First he gives hint on the police-station bomb, but they successfully de-activate it. Meanwhile, he tries to use a media person for getting the information of the happenings near the bomb location, but his attempt goes futile, as the Police Commissioner was intelligent enough not to reveal any information, by giving appropriate instructions to the media. Now, look at what happened during 26/11/08 Mumbai attacks. Either the terrorists got the idea by watching this movie, or the police were so doltish not to use their damned head, or both, due to which the forces behind the perpetration could watch every detail of the spot and give ingenious instructions to the criminals. When will our country learn to make use of its talent in any form in constructive way?

Next, he asks to release 4 notorious terrorists, who have been guests of Indian jails since a long time. In return, he offers to tell the Police the other 4 bomb locations. What happens after that, to use the least interesting word is, “interesting”. The best part of the movie is the moment of realization that this man (Shah) is really not a terrorist at all, instead he is a terrorist for terrorists. He had artfully kept a bomb to kill the 4. At the end, 3 terrorists die like common men die in a bomb blast and the last one in police's hand. The media cleverly creates its own story, that these terrorists tried to escape and got killed in the encounter, to aid the man to escape from the law. There are a few more memorable people/instants:

• A cute 'chocolate hero' (ethical hacker) to play the role similar to that of Sunny Vaghela (This 'hero' in between talks to his girlfriend, which irritates the Commissioner.) The 'hero' is supposed to find the place where the man is making the calls.

• The touching and motivating lecture given by “the common man” (as Shah calls himself), without mentioning his name, religion, native land. He says he got inspired to do all this because of the past train blast in Mumbai. When Commissioner asks him whether any of his relative died in that, the man's reply is too good. “Why? Should I have waited for that? Yes, there was one, in fact there were many of my people there. One boy had just got engaged.....”. Now, wait a second, I do not understand why and how can people discriminate as “their” and “other” people. (Bear with a bit of digression.) I can only differentiate between people with whom I can mentally “connect” easily and with whom I can't. For example, I can spend 5 hrs with a girl whom I've first met and had known through an article, or 1 hr on phone with a guy whom I've never seen, (worse, in the place of his face, I've seen a cold blooded criminal ) and hardly had known for a week, if the discussion is interesting enough. I can't talk to a few of my very close relatives of my age itself. Hence I can not understand the attitude of someone being 'mine' and 'not mine'. We are born alone, we die alone, aren't we living alone? Who belongs to whom? Either we can consider whole world to be ours or none. A law student had innocently asked me a few days back, “Is it not wrong to take law into hands? Is it not what naxalites do?” I think this movie answers her question. The frustrated, stupid, goddamn common man is forced to take law into his hands to save this country. When a “rational” human being knows what he is doing, what is wrong in doint it? Why can't we think a bit laterally? The field of criminal psychology is (if not, must become) advanced enough to distinguish between crazy and sensible criminals. In Shreemadbhagavadgeetha, it is said, “Yadaa yadaa hi dharmasya ..... Sambhavaami yuge yuge” What does this mean? If we keep waiting that a messiah will be sent by God to eradicate all our troubles, which is equivalent to hoping that the next government might solve our problems, there's no more stupidity than that. Our Dharma makes rooms for changes. If we believe in mythology, we can see that the rules by which people lived in the era of Ramayana and that of Mahabharatha are different. Similarly, we can adapt it as per the needs of today.

• The way everyone tries to help the man finally is impressive. The hacker who said earlier, “Sir, he is good, but he isn't the best, I can tell you where he's calling from, in the next call”, just turns his statement, saying “I was wrong”. The Commissioner is too shrewd to believe him and goes to the address given by the hacker. For a little while, I thought he will kill the man.

• The instant when the man says to the Commissioner that he has not kept bombs anywhere else (other than 2 locations) and the Commissioner replies with a crisp “I know.”

• Those moments of the movie which have portrayed Mr. Chief Minister as an idiot.
  

• The very last moment: the man and the Commissioner shake hands.