Originally posted by: asmitamohanty
So let me clarify it (even though I don't need to but still to avoid misunderstanding),
I am not a Dhurandhar hater....I saw it as a movie and there are certain things I liked and certain things I didn't like.... I found D1 really entertaining and intersting though.
So One of my biggest discomfort was the way they handled 26/11..
See, I feel fortunate that neither I nor anyone close to me was directly affected by the horror of 26/11. But that does not distance me from what it represents. For countless people, it was not just a headline or a date, it was loss, fear, helplessness. People lost their lives,lost their near and dear ones.Survivors saw death up close. Many of them likely carry that trauma even today in ways we cannot fully comprehend.
And that is exactly why the use of such a tragedy in cinema demands a certain responsibility.
When a film brings in real footage, real transcripts, real echoes of that night of 26/11, it is no longer operating purely in the space of fiction. It borrows the weight of reality...the kind of weight that comes from lived suffering. That weight is powerful. It makes the narrative feel authentic, immediate, unquestionable. But it also means that the emotions being evoked are not entirely earned by the story itself.They are inherited from a real, collective wound.
This is where it began to feel like manipulation to me.
Because the audience is not just responding to the film; they are responding to memory. A shared, deeply emotional memory that most people already associate with grief, anger, and fear. By invoking that memory so directly, the film doesn’t just tell us what to feel,it ensures that we feel it. The line between storytelling and emotional conditioning starts to blur.
For viewers who are not politically or cinematically inclined to question what they are watching(and India is filled with such people because not all are as privileged as us, survival is a struggle for so many people), for them, this effect can be even stronger. When real elements are embedded within fiction, the entire narrative can begin to feel real. Not just emotionally true, but factually true. And that is a powerful and potentially dangerous space for any film to occupy.
But beyond questions of perception and ideology, there is a more human concern.
For those who lived through that night, or lost someone in it, these are not “powerful cinematic moments.” They are fragments of trauma. Revisiting them especially in a heightened, dramatized form...can reopen wounds that never fully healed. It can trigger memories they have spent years trying to contain. And all of this happens in service of a narrative payoff that ultimately belongs to the film, not to them.
So my discomfort is not about Aditya Dhar as a filmmaker having a point of view. Cinema has always carried perspective, and it always will. The discomfort lies in how that perspective is delivered.
When real suffering becomes a tool to amplify fiction, when grief becomes a shortcut to intensity, when a national tragedy is used to steer emotion in a predetermined direction..it raises an uncomfortable but necessary question:
At what point does storytelling stop being expression and start becoming exploitation? At what point does “poetic cinematic justice” become a polished way of packaging someone else’s suffering for dramatic effect?
I’m genuinely happy for the entire cast and crew specially Ranveer, Akshay Khanna and Rakesh Bedi for the kind of response the film is receiving. Any piece of cinema finding connection with people is, in itself, something to acknowledge.
But at the same time, I find myself conflicted.
Because I’m not entirely sure what exactly the audience is responding to.Is it the storytelling? the craft, the writing, the performances, the way the narrative is built and earned?
Or is it the emotional weight of what the film draws from,the real trauma, the collective memory, the pain,the anger that already exists in people? Time will tell.
This is not just about this one film for me. It’s something I find myself grappling with across many political or patriotic films.So I hope noone tells me that "ohh this movie did that" as two wrongs doesn't make one of them right.
And please if anyone has to say anything to me on this subject tell me....i would love to listen to different pov...
Current Affairs
Seher Hone Ko Hai
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
2