‘Sarzameen' review: Strained family drama has little insight into Kashmir

Mint

3 days ago

Kayoze Irani's Sarzameen reminded me of another, very different Kajol film. I won't say which, or why. What I will say is that if you're hoping to land a wild plot twist, at least flesh out enough characters that the viewer can't figure out the reveal through simple deduction. Something about eliminating the impossible...
This is the second film in two months set in modern-day Kashmir and revolving around the armed forces serving there. Ground Zero, released days after the Pahalgam attack, is about a model BSF officer, devoted to his wife and young daughter. It's the more interesting of the two films, building to the verge of critical self-assessment before retreating to the safer ground of patriotic duty.
Sarzameen has a more fractious military family at its centre. Colonel Vijay Menon (Prithviraj Sukumaran) is introduced with a dramatic victory, leading the capture of separatist Qaabil (K.C. Shankar), believed to be the shadowy string-puller 'Mohsin'. But in the very next scene—in what will become a pattern—he's handed a defeat at home, at a party hosted by his wife, Meher (Kajol). She has a surprise: their son, Harman, wants to say a few words about his father. But the boy can't overcome his stutter, and is embarrassed into silence by the pointed murmuring of guests and his father's clear discomfort.
Vijay's coldness in this moment is consistent with his attitude towards the timid, sensitive boy who can't seem to please his demanding father. Meher tries to get him to be nicer, but you can sense it's no use, that army-obsessed Vijay has deemed his son unfit to serve, even on the homefront. One night, when Vijay is on duty, the boy is kidnapped by Qaabil's people. A prisoner exchange is demanded. Somehow, after it's done, Vijay still doesn't have his son.
If you've seen a trailer or a poster or heard anything about this film, you'll know that Harman returns. Or, at any rate, a young man who calls himself Harman, who turns up conveniently during an army sweep. Grown-up Harman, played by Ibrahim Ali Khan, is buff and bearded; he looks plausibly Kashmiri, despite neither of his parents looking remotely so. Vijay brings him home, but almost immediately—to his wife's disgust—suspects the young man is hiding something.
Sarzameen joins a growing list of films that see Kashmir only as a picturesque setting and a hook to hang their patriotism on. Almost all the Kashmiri characters in the film are terrorists; all the non-Kashmiris are army personnel. There's barely anything in the music, the detailing, the language to tie the film to its setting. When Qaabil and his son talk, it's in Hindi, without any sort of accent. The only thing that says Kashmir is the snow and the barbed wire and soldiers everywhere.
Shankar plays Qaabil with as much dignity as possible, but he's fighting a film that isn't interested in his character's reasons. Though Sarzameen isn't nasty like Article 370 (2024), it's not shy of stereotypes either. There are multiple scenes where assuming a Muslim name enables a character to become a true separatist. 'Why are you eating with your hands?' Vijay asks Harman on his first night home—a crazy thing to associate with Muslims, considering Indians of all kinds, all over the country, eat this way.
In his second film after Nadaaniyan, Khan still looks tentative. He doesn't give the impression of enjoying being in front of a camera, something you rarely see even in the least promising star kids. A more seasoned director could have helped him channel his wariness into the unhappy Harman, but Irani (son of Boman Irani, who appears in a small role), directing his first film, is tentative himself. The biggest miscalculation is barely developing Meher beyond being a worried mother, despite having Kajol in the role; there's a reason for this, a gamble that backfires spectacularly. A lesser stumble, but one that made me roll my eyes, is the scene where boy Harman and young man Harman have a conversation, a device much too tricky for a film this simple.
Sarzameen seems afraid to look the Kashmir conflict in the face. The film it superficially resembles is Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Mission Kashmir (2000), in which police superintendent Inayat Khan adopts the child of civilians who are killed during a operation he's leading, only for the boy to grow up, find out the truth and vow to end his life. It's a far more provocative scenario, and though it has its blind spots, the film is alive to the place, its people and their troubles. Sarzameen, on the other hand, remains an outside observer, and doesn't do a good job of that either.