Director Nitesh Tiwari, the man behind commendable films like Children’s Party, Dangal, and Chhichhore, comes up with a project presenting a weird or illogical idea deliberately mixing a troubled marriage and the horrors of the holocaust executed by Hitler during World War II.
Introducing an unusual character of a history teacher played by Varun Dhawan, the story keeps moving at a brisk pace but never cares to find some logic in its proceedings dealing with such serious subjects. More concerned about his positive image in society, it first seems Varun is a conman hiding his real identity. But the film soon moves over that confusion getting into a hurried arranged marriage and its later troubles.
However, it is the basic idea of the script that defies all logical justifications in the present world of YouTube travel videos. To give you an idea, which middle-class teacher can think of visiting the European cities, spending lakhs of rupees of his own, to make videos for teaching the school students. And that too to teach only one chapter of World War II ignoring all the other history chapters of the textbook, as if the exams would only ask the questions from that one chapter alone and not for anything else. Wonder why the teacher is not even aware of a library full of books to refer to or the new-age travel videos easily available on the net, capable of teaching and conveying the same.
Putting it bluntly, at one end the teacher is technically sound to use the LIVE facility on the mobile phones for his teaching classes, but at the same time doesn’t even know that the same purpose can be solved by showing the already posted videos of the same places by others at various YouTube channels.
In between this bizarre script, we also have the man giving disgusting looks to his wife suffering from epilepsy fits right after the marriage, just because it will spoil his image in society. Cannot comment on how Nitesh thought of writing such senseless characters and story progression after delivering so beautifully written scripts in his previous ventures.
Further, the director’s attempt to make something bigger and meaningful keeps falling flat every time the couple visits a new place abroad remembering the holocaust and the war’s other victims. The pace at which such sequences come and go, without any impressive execution serves no purpose at all and I doubt any youngster (not aware of the history) will get influenced enough to read and know more about that eye-opener tragic times from some better resources.
The writing also does not give much to perform to the supporting cast, with only Manoj Pahwa and Mukesh Tiwari managing to leave an impact. Besides, the forced parallel plot of a funny Gujarati family travelling to the same cities remains ineffective throughout. Among the lead couple, Janhvi Kapoor performs better than Varun, mainly because Varun never looks like a school teacher and Janhvi gets more to display as a silently suffering wife. To be fair, Varun tries hard, but the silly characterisation never allows him to excel.
But more importantly, this is certainly not the film, which should introduce this subject of Hitler and his horrifying gas chambers to the youngsters making such a feeble impact. The young minds certainly deserve far better, impressive, and emotionally effective films to know about those tragic events. If truth be told then BAWAAL ruins the shock of their life, they would have got, knowing about those brutal, mass murders by Hitler, watching a superior, focused, and meaningful movie or documentary.
In short, if Nitesh seriously wished to talk about that awful part of world history in a Hindi film, then he should have thought of another script to depict the tragedy, without trivialising the subject taking such a poor and simplistic path, along with all unnecessary and routine songs.
That said, despite its below-average presentation, the film still gives you one life-teaching fact to keep in mind when it showcases the place of Hitler’s death. As shown in the film, the place where he died has a car parking built on it at the present instead of any monument. Because that is how history remembers cruel and merciless rulers like Hitler in a deserving manner.
Ending on a personal note, in Mumbai, it all depends upon who pitches such an absurd idea to the producers and what is his background/reputation. If a Nitesh Tiwari is narrating such a weird script, then the production houses will readily accept it as an interesting novel concept. But if the same comes from a fresh newcomer writer, then they will throw it right away, calling it ridiculous. That is the ground reality, whether anyone accepts, agrees, or not referring to BAWAAL.
Rating : 2 / 5 (including 1 just for the sincere efforts of the lead couple and the key supporting cast)
Bobby Sing
(bobbytalkscinema.com)
