Children of War
Would you go to war for peace?
A boy his sister and his father's word.
A liberal patriotic journalist.
A beautiful disaster.
A war child's search for acceptance...
His cry for justice...
and a nation inundated in blood!
In one of the many mind-numbing images in this exceptionally vivid work on the wages of war, the back of a truck is jolted open and out falls a tumble of women one on top of another at a Pakistani prisoner camp for Bangladeshi women run by a despicable tyrant who could be the Nazi mass murder Ralph Fiennes in Steven SpielbergÂ’s SchindlerÂ’s List.
But no. ItÂ’s Pavan Malhotra, brilliantly evil and slimy as the man who believes that if Pakistani soldiers rape and impregnate enough Bangaldeshi women , the separatists and freedom fighters would stop dreaming of their own home-land.
This is the irrational, blood-soaked ravaged Pakistan of 1971 when Bangladesh was born out of the most horrific violence perpetrated against humanity.
Very often as I watched debutant director Mrityunjay DevvratÂ’s stunning film I was reminded of the great anti-Nazi films, like Alan PakulaÂ’s SophieÂ’s Choice ,Richard AttenboroughÂ’s A Bridge Too Far , and Quentin TarantinoÂ’s Inglorious Basterds. I was also reminded of Nandita DasÂ’s Firaaq about GujaratÂ’s 2002 genocide where a truckload of corpses had tumbled out. The difference is,the women who fall from the truck like trash from a garbage van in Children Of War are alive.
They might as well be dead. There are visuals and sounds of pain and anguish in this turbulent treatise on one of historyÂ’s worst atrocities that will stay with me forever.
It is impossible to believe that this war epic has been directed by a first-time filmmaker.How can a virgin artiste conceive such a vivid portrait of the rape of a civilization?
This isnÂ’t really a film. ItÂ’s a work of art, tempestuous and terrific.
Yes, this is a masterpiece.