Bawaal review - Page 10

How much I would like to counter almost every negative comment about the movie...

Again an example to me how a trailer should not determine if one watches the movie or not...

To me, it was important to read opposing reviews here...the praising versus the damning incited me to get my own opinion:

A gem of a movie, devoid of all glamour as even the glamourous lead man is shown as a fake - from the very beginning. A loser living through an image he has succeeded to build in his small world, just enough to make believe his supreme worth in the community being a teacher...

Then three things happen...he marries a beautiful and nice woman but decides to not showing her to his world (1)... he hits the kid of an influential citizen because he can't answer the kid's question why the jews killed in the concentration camps had to strip naked (2)...he gets suspended which severely damages his image (3)...

Varun is excellent as a good-for-nothing man to whom it is more important to create a certain 'ambiance' and 'attitude' than to learn from and for life... and I liked Janhvi in her role of the smart woman that is prepared to divorce this self-centered man but still has hope...

What is a parable? "A short simple story illustrating a moral or spiritual truth."

Bawaal is such a story...and if one accepts that the only greed beneficial to mankind is the greed for learning than one would understand why the journey - made to save an image through faked grandeur - deals with Hitler, the WW2 and genocide of Jews.

As someone that has been to Auschwitz, I can’t actually believe that someone would be so thick headed and have such a dialogue in the movie. This takes being tone deaf to another level. Who writes these dialogues and which even dumber person agrees to say such dialogues man?! Ugh

Originally posted by: sev.puri

As someone that has been to Auschwitz, I can’t actually believe that someone would be so thick headed and have such a dialogue in the movie. This takes being tone deaf to another level. Who writes these dialogues and which even dumber person agrees to say such dialogues man?! Ugh

sev, could you elaborate about the dialogue...because the Auschwitz visit had also hearing the story of a survivor who talked about his wife (and Nisha = Janhvi's character translating because Ajay = Varun's character has difficulties to understand the English spoken there).

After everything Ajay had already learned, this is the key scene that makes him realise what really counts what is seen when Nisha gets the 2nd fit in the movie (one at the beginning of the movie, one at the end) in the former gas-chamber.

Do you mean what the old man said? the "every relationship goes through their Auschwitz...only then do we learn its significance...it was too late by the time I learned its significance..."

Originally posted by: Clochette

sev, could you elaborate about the dialogue...because the Auschwitz visit had also hearing the story of a survivor who talked about his wife (and Nisha = Janhvi's character translating because Ajay = Varun's character has difficulties to understand the English spoken there).

After everything Ajay had already learned, this is the key scene that makes him realise what really counts what is seen when Nisha gets the 2nd fit in the movie (one at the beginning of the movie, one at the end) in the former gas-chamber.

Do you mean what the old man said? the "every relationship goes through their Auschwitz...only then do we learn its significance...it was too late by the time I learned its significance..."

I guessed it! But I think it's only not approriate if you fix it at the name of Auschwitz...in what the old man narrates, Auschwitz becomes another meaning...

As I wrote earlier, this movie serves as a kind of parable....something often used to make people learn some vital lessons...it was clear in the movie the moment, Ajay took the headphones at the Normandy Beach.

Auschwitz stands for the separation with no returns in this context...and well...it was a life lesson for Ajay that - finally - made him realise the futility of building (and keeping) an image...in a very apropriate relation to German history at that time...Germany will never recover of what was discovered ... fortunately, Ajay was honest enough to give genuine history lessons to his students and answered the boy's question.

I really wonder what Indian schools (and schoolbooks) narrate about that time...

Originally posted by: Clochette

I guessed it! But I think it's only not approriate if you fix it at the name of Auschwitz...in what the old man narrates, Auschwitz becomes another meaning...

As I wrote earlier, this movie serves as a kind of parable....something often used to make people learn some vital lessons...it was clear in the movie the moment, Ajay took the headphones at the Normandy Beach.

Auschwitz stands for the separation with no returns in this context...and well...it was a life lesson for Ajay that - finally - made him realise the futility of building (and keeping) an image...in a very apropriate relation to German history at that time...Germany will never recover of what was discovered ... fortunately, Ajay was honest enough to give genuine history lessons to his students and answered the boy's question.

I really wonder what Indian schools (and schoolbooks) narrate about that time...

I specifically like the Normandy scene picturisation and what Ajju says afterwards. The fact that in history books it only gets a line or two of mention .

The pain , the destruction, the enormity of the damage, loss of such young lives hits Ajju. Very aptly shown.

I liked bawaal more than i expected. I think it wants to show that our normal problems r nothing in front of those problems faced by people during world war. So we should be happy n satisfied with what we have in our life

sev, honestly, to me it is absolutely okay if you don't accept this comparison 😊

No, I hadn't been at Auschwitz... we have Dachau in Germany (near Munich)...and I have a vaste knowledge of the way Jews and "defected" people had been treated during the '3rd Reich'.

The way Tiwari picturized the horrors of the war and the camps were sufficient to change Ajay's thinking about his own position in life...it was well made...

Did you watch the Italian movie "Life is beautiful"? It's another impressive movie where the horrors of a fascist concentration camp serve to give a life lesson.

Anne Frank is very special to me as I read her diary when I was at her age...and this book (and the different movies about) equally gives you a life lesson.

You see, Tiwari used the journey and the narration of the old man to tell something he wanted to give to the audience to reflect...but somehow I guess that those who work for separative thinking in India just shut their mind and heart (you know that I don't mean you, okay!).