Unapologetic vs Sugar Coating
That’s the key difference. My 2 cents: There are lots of national soul-affecting events in our history which have never been addressed by Bollywood, unlike how they have been addressed out in the West. Entire 50s-70s were full of WWII dramas, and to this day we are seeing few such releases every year. WWII was a humongous trauma endured by the West, and there are people still alive reliving those events and attempting closure when seeing the depiction on screen. Then the Vietnam War, Kennedy assassination, 9/11, Iraq, etc. etc. have been depicted without ever shying away from realism.
In India, the prolific and almost mind numbingly violent terrorism events of all those past decades were only addressed in some fringe low-budget cinema that barely registered and was quickly forgotten. How could anyone even attempt realistic closure, especially when budgets are denied to any competent filmmaker who could dare to display a tight narrative. The de facto setting of the Indian State had been to mollycoddle the masses into quietly accepting Bollywood fare that has consistently swept realism under the fantasy-fabric rug. Anyone brave enough to address contemporary history in any sort of realistic sense had been systematically silenced. Except ofc when it came to Gujarat 2002!
The 26/11 event had manifested collective helpless rage within the masses, especially over the humongous apathy of the central govt. I remember frantically trying to call Mumbai relatives during those days to gauge the news, and hearing the fear-filled voices of people thinking of themselves as sitting ducks in a bizarre incredulous multi-day nightmare being enacted on TV screens with the dysfunctional government of a nuclear-powered 3rd largest army, almost fighting like toy soldiers, held hostage by mere few gunmen in the largest commercial capital of the country. Where was the realistic closure to that huge national trauma?
No WTC, Zero Dark Thirty, United 93 types of well-made mainstream historically connected realistic attempts to bring closure and help heal open national wounds.
Moviegoers have always tried to instead find closure in fantasy. I still remember that immediately after the horror of 26/11 the first mainstream movie to emerge was RBNDJ. With its calming images of Golden Temple vistas, and a totally non-violent treatment, it sort of soothed that wounded psyche. It was immediately followed by a rage-filled Ghajini protagonist single-handedly settling scores, that perhaps was subconsciously accepted as a device to vent out the national rage. But nothing ever since to actually realistically address the wound which festers within.
Out here in the West, the Indian self-unaware, silly, unsophisticated/rustic stereotype has also unequivocally been bolstered by our primary cultural export of silly vaudeville-inspired Bollywood cinema. Our movies get noticed or even dare to approach any critical acclaim only when a SLB/SSR tries to recreate Baz Luhrmanesque wild art, where realism/reality is thrown for a toss. As the real India grows in wealth, with sensibilities yearning for more realism to emerge out of the constant vaudeville fixation, a film such as this jolts the senses and hopefully resets future expectations.
After the nightmare of partition, it took 6 decades for a Gadar to attempt closure. 26/11 was perhaps one of the largest national nightmares since 1947, that had never found closure on the Big Screen. Dhurandhar seems to be addressing it.
