Lakshminarayan H Rao

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Brilliantly made movie. The screenplay and direction were flawless. The makers stuck to the plot with no bollywood masala in between. The BGM was inspring. The movie was very informative too - it provides the viewer glimpses of the patient and meticulous planning, perseverance, hard work and most importantly the impeccable execution by the Govt and all the agencies that made it possible to repeal the Article 370 once and for all. Kashmir hamara tha, hamara hai aur hamesha rahega...(Pok will come soon too). Jai Hind!

#TheTashkentFiles Movie Review: At the outset let me tell you that this is the first ever movie I'm writing a review for. More than a review, it's just my thoughts on why people should really watch this movie. I'm someone who does not watch many movies in theatres and for that reason I do read some 'expert' reviews for the few I intend to watch. I was quite intrigued when I saw the trailer of #TheTaskentFiles and was keen to watch it. But my enthusiasm fizzled out after reading the NDTV, Scroll reviews and so I didn't watch it in the first week. Then over the week I recollected that NDTV, Scroll and the Wire had rated even the movie 'URI' very badly using terms like 'Toxic Hypernationalism', 'Propoganda movie’. I also began to read a lot of independent blogs and honest reviews thay were coming up on FB and Twitter by those who really watched it. Most reviews were very positive. So I decided to give it a watch. So here it goes - The Movie is a very gripping and engaging thriller. The movie primarily makes us aware of a lot of facts and information about our Late PM. Lal Bahadur Shastris death, all of which are already out there in the public domain. Just google it. The director has done some basic research and has pieced together all the information from various sources to make it into a very engaging movie. The movie is for those who always themselves had or heard from someone else of Questions about the mysterious and suspicious death of Shastri ji, but never quite found time to read about them. All Unanswered questions- Shockingly even more than 50 years after his death. The movie takes us through all those questions one by one and attempts to make us think and ponder about the probable answers. To someone who is well read on Indias post independence history, it may even lead right up to the door steps of the answers. As the movie progressed, I went through a lot of strong emotions- Sadness, Anger, Despair and in the end a strong Resolve. Sadness because of how Lal Bahadur Shastris life and achievements were completely ignored by our great 'historians', Anger because of how all of the information and facts about his unnatural death were suppressed and hidden from us for so long, and Despair thinking about whether even after knowing all these facts, would anyone ever (the old, current or next generations) even care about it or just ignore and move on. Resolve came from knowing for sure that I will do my part in reading up and researching more and educating people about how even after independence, we Indians have been enslaved, cheated, looted and kept in the dark by the very people - Politicians, Administrators, Social Workers, Media, Professors, Historians, Activists, Judiciary etc who claimed to have won us our independence, who claimed to protect us, who claimed to enlighten us, who claimed to uplift us from social and economic poverty. A movie is not always just for entertainment. A movie can also be made for making us think, ponder, reason and ask questions about ourselves, our surroundings, our society, our history, our achievements, our mistakes and sometimes even inspire us to collectively work towards improving these in our present and for our future generations. This movie will surely atleast make us think and ponder, if not any of the rest of it. Good performance by most of the actors, but the performance of the main protagonist Shweta Basu Prasad clearly stands out. On the negatives, the background score could have been much better and some of the argumentative scenes could have been avoided. But then I feel there were some messages that the director wanted to convey through those repetitive arguments. Overall I would say that movie is a very good watch. Now coming to rating - the NDTV rated it 0.5/5 and the Scroll rated it 1/5 garnished with some nasty comments. Now that I have watched the movie, the one thing completely convinced of is that the ratings were deliberately given so low so that the general public avoids watching the movie