Biased reporting?

Sabarmati Report
Director: Dheeraj Sarna

https://uae.voxcinemas.com/movies/

the-sabarmati-report-hindi

Numerous events occur constantly in India. With such a vast population, all possessing clear minds and no hesitation in expressing their views, skirmishes are inevitable. The issue is that resolutions or conclusions to these conflicts are rarely found. Legal processes for achieving closure and incarcerating the perpetrators are agonisingly slow. When justice is attained, the public loses interest and shifts focus to more pressing matters. The tragic fire that claimed the lives of 59 individuals in two coaches of the Sabarmati Express, which was travelling from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad on 27 February 2002, serves as an example. The train, carrying numerous volunteers and devotees, was returning from Ayodhya. During a scheduled stop at Godhra, Gujarat, chaos erupted, and before long, the passengers found themselves trapped in a burning train.

Shortly after the incident, the State of Gujarat set up a heavily criticised one-man Commission led by retired judge K.G. Shah to investigate the matter and establish whether it was accidental or criminal. Substantial criticism arose regarding the choice of investigator, Shah, who was known to have close ties with then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. A second investigator, Nanavati, another retired judge, was later added to the Commission.

 

In 2003, the Concerned Citizens Tribunal concluded that the incident was an accident, ruling out foul play. In 2008, the Nanavati-Shah Commission released its preliminary report, which unequivocally asserted that the Godhra incident was orchestrated by local Muslims, identifying an Islamic strongman as its mastermind. The report faced significant condemnation, primarily because of its timing, which coincided with the upcoming State Elections. Shah passed away months before the report's release, and another retired judge, Mehta, took over his role. 

Six years later, in 2014, the Nanavati-Mehta Commission issued their findings. It classified the Godhra Station incident as a planned conspiracy. Local Muslim leaders, knowing that the train would be carrying Hindu devotees from Ayodhya, methodically staged a frenzied mob, locked in passengers of a single train coach, poured petrol and lit them, and killed all its passengers, including women and children.

Throughout, the police and courts operated independently of any reports. They determined that a conspiracy had indeed occurred and sentenced 31 individuals to life imprisonment. Nevertheless, the alleged mastermind was acquitted.

The film aims to retell the story from the perspective of a young cameraman, Samar Kumar, who works for a reputable television station. His first assignment centres on the Godhra incident, leading him to disillusionment with the entire system. What he captures on camera sharply contrasts with what is reported to the world. The executives at a higher level control the narrative. 

Samar departs from the media—whether by choice or necessity—and spirals into self-destruction through alcohol. His life receives a renewed chance when another young journalist uncovers his footage and reopens the case.

The film seeks to illustrate the divide in Indian media between English-language channels and vernacular options, specifically Hindi in this case. The English-language channels are depicted as submissive to their Congress leaders, who may have their own agendas. 

For a long time, foreign channels have faced accusations of biased reporting on news related to India. Additionally, many local Indian channels are extensions of these parent companies from elsewhere. It is also claimed that several Indian channels are owned by Christian missionary groups based abroad. With numerous allegations of forced conversions by these groups, people are left to ponder where their loyalties lie - with Bharat Mata or with their paymasters in the Southern Baptist Church, the Communist Party, or an unidentified figure?

https://www.caclubindia.com/forum/who-owns-the-media-in-india-122303.asp

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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The devil in us?

Murder at Orient Express (2017)

What was supposed to be an Agatha Christie's whodunnit turned out to be highly philosophical one. Sure, we all, by now must be quite familiar with the quirky Inspector Hercule Poirot and his peculiar ways of solving crimes. Here Mon. Poirot carries with him a baggage of a melancholic past and tries to make sense of the actions of mankind; his penchant for criminal activities, his failure to follow the path acceptable as the correct one should be.

A single action has many repercussions. A single turn of event that goes against our desires strains our relationships, changes our perspective of the future, increases anxiety, induces phobia, shatters confidence, brings psychosomatic maladies, destroys families literally and metaphorically as well as destroys the whole community in more ways than we realise.

All after all the generations of our existence, we still succumb to our primal desires to be blinded by anger and emotions. At the crucial time of reckoning, our hearts (and other organs) dictate our next moves. The decisive and critical mind is kept shut from the equation. Bypassing rational thinking, we are left to deal with the after-effects of our mindless actions. Pretty soon, we would realise that the hole that we have dug soon metamorphose into a rapid quicksand which engulfs us.

Is forgiveness an option to start a clean slate? Unfortunately, it is not so simple. We never learn from our mistakes. We only turn wiser, not to repeat our earlier that got us caught in the first place. We jostle, we snake, we burrow, and we squirm to deny all wrongdoings. We blame the devil in us that control our sense and hope to get a get-out-from-jail card.

What lurks beneath?

Bal el Hadid (@ Cairo Station @ Iron Gate, Egypt 1958)
Director: Youssef Chahine

Surprisingly, Egypt has a vibrant movie industry that dates back to 1896! Its golden era is between the 1940s and 1960s. Despite the changing of guards and political outlook, it stood the test of time. President Gamel Abdel Naseer's planned nationalisation had irreparable damage to its heydays and never really recovered after that.
The director of this movie is also credited for introducing Omar Sharif to Hollywood, although not through this movie.

This 1958 release is an Egyptian noir film depicting small people in a busy railway station. Even though the story is a simple one of which we have seen many by now, it must have been revolutionary at its time. The movie's lovely thing is how the various strata of society are depicted to intermingle at an economic level. It also shows the difference in people's outlook in metropolitan Cairo, the modern outgoing Western viewpoints and conservative ones who frown upon the antics of the so-called 'immoral' ones. It is a meeting place of many characters; some make a living there.

With this background, the story starts with a newsstand owner adopting a young man, Qinawi, who has a deformed leg and lies idle on the platform. He is sent off vending newspaper. He soon realises that Qinawi is not right in the mind. His shack is filled with newspaper cuttings of scantily clad models.
Qinawi fancies (obsessed) Hanoumma, a flirtatious soft drink vendor. He has big plans for a wedding and settling down by the seaside. Unfortunately, Hanoumma has her eyes set tightly on Abu Sirieh, a hunky porter at the station.

Inserted into the subplot is how Hanoumma and her friends are always on the run from the railway security as their business is illegal and hurts the legitimate shop owners. A couple of love birds secretly wish each other farewell as the boy leaves for overseas, and their relationship is unknown to the family. Then, there is a feud among the porters. A group wants to form a union to fight for their alleged unfair wages. Abu Sirieh is supportive of the old system of patronage. There is looming a story of a murderer in the newspaper.

The filmography is interesting because it has many closeups of the steam train and sets the mood of the humid and explosive set of the scenes.

Qinawi, after being rejected by Hanoumma, recoils into a rage and systematically plans to kill Qinawi. The wrong girl is stabbed in the confusion of darkness, put in a trunk and packed off in a train. The remaining shows the truth surfaces and how Qinawi is tricked into a straightjacket by his adopted father.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Clash of the classes!

Snowpiercer 2013

This is an exciting movie depicting the world we live in, which goes on with its class system and the ruling elite who masterminds the destiny of life. It uses a moving train as symbolism to our moving planet and its occupants at the tail end as the poor peasants who live life in hardship and misery. The occupants of the front portion live in abundance and decadence. They are the controlling elite who sometimes makes seemingly heartless decisions to sustain continuity of life as they knew it on the continuously moving trans-continental train, which is running at break-neck speed and is self-sufficient in supporting itself.

It is the year 2031. An unsuccessful experiment in 2014 at correcting global warming, the world becomes a tundra land. Life had been eradicated, save for some survivors aboard a self-sustaining always moving train that spans through the continents. Self-sustaining because it harvests water from the snow that the train crushes through, prepares food and lodging for its occupants/passengers. The order was set by hierarchy, the poorer passengers at the tail end and the affluent near the engine. The effluent one is the one who decides the day to day running of affairs with the orders coming directly from the genius who had invented the futuristic train, Wilford.

The separation between the classes can be described as draconian. The people from the back cannot move up forward. Law and order are maintained with guns and force. Interestingly the total population never increases. Punishment is meted in the most inhumane fashion, limbs maimed, and children are taken into the front for unspecified reasons.

Tolerance reached a breaking point. After an earlier failed attempt many years earlier, Curtis, the reluctant leader, heads a mutiny. After discovering that the enforcers were only carrying bulletless assault weapons, they marched forward. The bullets had all finished after the first mutiny.
Slowly, they discover the horrors that were going on under the cloak of maintaining order with the help of a dope addicted electronic genius, Minsu and his junkie daughter Yona.

Minsu and Yona were deliberately drugged to keep them obedient. They discover that the affluent were having a whale of a time with booze, leisure, music and a clean, bright environment, unlike the roach-infested dungeon that they lived. The children that had been taken away were actually made to work the train as some spare parts could be replaced! The supposed protein-enriched nutritious food that the lower class people were served was actually a paste of processed ground insects and roaches!
After finally meeting the elusive Wilfred and discovering the horrific secret of the train and plenty of hellbent fighting the train finally explodes essentially killing all its occupants, save two.

They move out of the train only to discover that there is actually life outside the train; unlike what they were taught to believe.

This film draws parallelism to what is actually happening in our world. The classes are separated using imaginary rules and regulations which do not hold water. Nothing can actually stop defiance and revolt. To keep things in check and balance, we are told that we are the chosen ones. Outside our planet, there is no life form. To sustain life, the elitists create an artificial situation to squeeze out even the last drop of the blood and sweat of the poor peasants. The comfort of the ruling elite is always of paramount importance. The rest of the mortals can just, well go to hell.

On the other hand, continuation and sustenance of a species and civilisation always falls on the shoulders of the selected few in any species who were essentially put there by natural selection to push the being to a different level so that the subsequent offspring would be better prepared to face and win over the endurance race to survival!