Hindi Film review Johnson Thomas A lost crusade Film: Ziyarat( the pilgrimage) Cast: Irfan Choudhury, poonam Sudan, Vipin Kumar Goswami, Suman Rathore, Sagar Sehrai Director: Suresh K Goswami Rating: * Entrepreneur Businessman Suresh K Goswami tries his hand at filmmaking and the result is uneven, extremely amateurish and vividly unsatisfying. But that’s not to say that his noble intentions of bringing to the fore a cause close to his heart (that of refugee Kashmiri Pandits who have nowhere to call home), does not come out loud and clear.
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In fact that is the only reason why this film ‘Ziyarat’ warrants any form of curiosity status. It’s a borrowed plot point, one reckoned to have become a cliché of sorts, to begin with. An orphaned Muslim boy Abdul Qadir is given solace in the Hindu home of a Panditji and he grows up , gets married to Maryam and continues to show his gratitude to his caretaker parents and friend-turned sibling Dina Nath and wife Girija.
The ageing parents of Dina Nath are killed and both Dina Nath and Girija have to flee the state to save their lives, leaving behind a 6 month old child Posh, whom they believe to be dead. Abdul Qadir witnesses the massacre while coming back home one night and once the terrorists move out of range , he rescues Posh and takes the child to his wife who is only too willing to care for the child with whom she had developed an attachment of sorts. Abdul Qadir, whose only ambition was to go to Haj on a pilgrimage, now abandons that plan and decides to make the search for Dina Nath and Girija his new goal.
The movie from thereon takes us on that very long-drawn and tedious journey , traversing from one refugee camp to another, all over Jammu and Kashmir. As expected, he finds the duo at the end of his search and the end drags on further to accommodate the wedding between two social workers who aided Abdul Qadir in his near endless search, and also forces down our throats some more of the drama about the child’s alienation from his birth parents. The story had potential, no doubt.
In fact if a better script-writer and far more accomplished director had handled it, it could have been a potential emotion-wringer. Suresh K Goswami scripted, produced and directed this film, making a royal mess of both screenplay and direction. The poor production values are definitely not the only off-putting thing about the film. The antiquated style of narration Goswami adopts, went out with Doordarshan in the early 80’s. In fact the narration is so unaccomplished that the drama never comes to the fore.
It’s almost as if the director was holding back on all counts -for want of a better budget. And the prize he pays for that is a deficit of conviction. It’s hard to get involved in a make-believe story that is ploddy and devoid of energy. The cause is commendable but the story being used to propagate it, plays out as stagey and unremarkable. The experience doesn’t prompt the viewer to feel for the protagonist or his cause. Even the props used in the film look like they’ve been borrowed from an age, way past. The performances are age-old ‘talkie’ style, veering towards theatrical rather than realism.
The slow intonation, lack of dramatic flourish in the expression and almost unyielding posture cultivated by the actors( all kashmiri novices) makes the effort to stay awake akin to that of running a marathon. Though the mild-mannered narrative stays evenly toned in terms of sound effects, the result appears to be less than what it should have been. The editing is so laidback and lazy that even a two hour runtime feels like a four-hour torture of the senses.