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A GRIM CHRONICLE

Though not without its faults, through the making of a charged political thriller like Madras Café they have created a cult film and at the same time set a new benchmark for Hindi cinema. In the opening sequences, while laying out the geopolitical history of the region primarily through voiceovers, it appeared more muddled than moving. It takes almost half the length of the film to come to terms with the incoherent and jarring narrative. Yet the equations of power and eloquence, truth and fiction, empathy and insensitivity could not have been balanced in a more fitting manner.

Madras Café is a nimble, impertinent and grim chronicle of an ignoble offshoot of political history in the run up to the slaying of the former prime minister of the world’s largest democracy.

In India on one side of the coin is a huge population of young and educated who want to explore newer turfs, stay with the times, and on the other there is the vast section of illiterates whom the politicians and dream merchants relentlessly exploit.

The reason why movies of the genre of Madras Café deserve to have an audience is because only by imbuing hope in the Johns and Shoojits of this generation will we also qualify to be contemporaries of our time. After all every stone within its fold furtively fosters a sculpture waiting for the first tap of the sculptor’s chisel.

S.A. Najeeb, by email