Ae Watan Mere Watan review: Sara Ali Khan’s dialogue is more painful to watch than India’s freedom struggle | bollywood

Ae Watan Mere Watan Movie Review: Do you remember Sara Ali Khan’s dialogue “Tum mujhe tang karne lage ho” from Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal (2020) that made so much noise? I had a kind of déjà vu watching her in Ae Watan Mere Watan and how she delivers her lines in this historical drama. (Also Read: Sara Ali Khan on Making Her Family Proud: ‘I Want to Inspire My Brother Ibrahim as a Big Sister’)

The film, in all honesty, is a sincere attempt to be a different, nuanced and well-told story of an unsung hero in India’s freedom struggle, but Sara’s horrible dialogue, with several mismatched expressions, comes off as be the obstacle that you can I will not pass. I mean, we criticized Rashmika Mandanna for her poor dialogue delivery in Animal, when she doesn’t even speak Hindi as a mother tongue, so seeing Sara sail in the same boat was definitely a bit painful. Mind you, she does amazing poetry (ahem, ahem) in shuddh (pure) Hindi and she knows Urdu well too. Maybe a few dialect lessons from her would have saved her, and the audience too.

As a film, Ae Watan Mere Watan doesn’t need any context or flashbacks to give you the premise, as it switches from black and white frames to sepia tones very quickly. Taking you straight back to the pre-independence era of the early 1940s, the film focuses on the freedom fighters and agitating youth on the streets coming together for the Quit India movement. Ae Watan Mere Watan relies heavily on chest-thumping patriotism with chants of Jai Hind and Vande Mataram often causing commotion among the youth and the British police.

The film, which highlights India’s struggle for freedom in 1942, follows the life of Usha Mehta (Sara), a young woman who defies all obstacles to make her hatred for the British authorities heard. It is after the arrest of prominent freedom fighters that Usha, along with her trusted allies Fahad (Spash Srivastava) and Kaushik (Abhay Verma), take matters into their hands. The film shows her journey to start an underground radio station called Congress Radio with the sole aim of spreading the message of unity against British rule. Following Mahatma Gandhi’s ideologies of non-violence, the motto they follow is ‘Karo Ya Maro’ (Do or Die), and some of them even take an oath of celibacy. During the trip, her meeting with Ram Manohar Lohia (Emraan Hashmi) gives a new direction to her revolution and then begins a thrilling chase with the British authorities.

Loosely based on the life of this unsung hero, the biopic serves as a chapter in a history textbook. However, as the story unfolds, a bit of predictability comes sooner than you might imagine. Kannan Iyer returns to direction after more than a decade since her directorial debut with Ek Thi Daayan, and what a stark contrast of genres she chose to be behind the camera. In her latest outing, she tries to keep the old-world charm intact, evident in the architecture of the buildings, the narrow alleys, the clothing and the dialect.

Sara, who donned an overtly glamorous avatar in her Netflix India film Murder Mubarak, which released last week, is seen in a totally deglamorous role in Ae Watan Mere Watan. However, it is interesting to note how her wardrobe transitions from cotton suits and neatly draped dupattas to cotton sarees with puff-sleeved blouses. She seems to have put all her power into this subdued performance, but having seen Sara’s personality, she seemed a little wrong. She never convinces you like Usha or someone who will be so subtle in her actions. However, there is one scene in particular where she enters a mosque hidden behind a burqa, and she is performed quite well.

Emraan, on the other hand, stands out as Lohia and brings gravitas with his act. There are some heavyweight lines that she gets to say, for example, “Chahe kitni bhi teeliyan bujh jayein, hamare beene ki aag kabhi nahi bujhegi” (No matter how many matches go out, the fire in our hearts will always remain).

Other things worth paying attention to include Usha’s dynamic with her father, Judge Hariprasad Mehta (Sachin Khedekar). Whether it’s the scenes of her childhood when she watches Serbian birds flying in the sky and wishing she had wings, to the moments when she is an adult and she confesses to her father that she works for Congress, these well-written parts They will move you. .

I especially loved the entire sequence where Usha, Fahad and Kaushik strategize to start the radio station. arrest $551 to buy the radio that would cost them $4000, Usha’s bua (paternal aunt) offers to sell her gold jewelery and wants to make some contribution in ‘desh ki azaadi’ (independence of the country) to decide the right time for its transmission when the top board is at home and even composing All India Radio’s signature tune – you can notice the details that the editorial department has paid attention to.

The fact that Ae Mere Watan is set in the pre-independence era, one cannot overlook the unapologetic use of Hindi terminology scattered throughout the story. So, don’t be surprised to hear words like avaam, azaadi, kaayar, angrez, mazhab, zaalim, yudh, balidaan, garv, kranti, vidroh, shaheed, ahinsa, parcham, sangharsh and samrajya every two minutes. Yes, I tried to take note of as many as I could and they are long additions to your vocabulary.

Ae Watan Mere Watan may have some complicated tropes, which are difficult to understand if you don’t pay proper attention, but you should give it to the team to at least try to simplify it. For example, when the Mumbai Police track Congress Radio and its location, the use of triangulation technology is explained very well and in depth. All I wish is that similar attention had been paid to Sara’s dialogue delivery techniques, so that it would have been a more bearable two-hour-plus watch.

Ae Watan Mere Watan is now streaming on Prime Video India.

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