Starring: Ishaan Khatter, Mrunal Thakur, Priyanshu Painyuli, Soni Razdan, Inaamulhaq
Director: Raja Krishna Menon
An interesting premise, a good cast and great cinematography. Menon‘s new war film, ‘Pippa’, seems to be checking all the criteria of a great film, at least on paper.
This biographical war film is based on the life of Captain Balram Singh Mehta – known simply as ‘Balli’ in the film – who belonged to India’s 45 Cavalry regiment and fought on the eastern front during the India-Pakistan war of 1971. It seeks to highlight India’s generosity in the liberation of Bangladesh, then known as East Pakistan, and the contribution of several people towards the cause. The title ‘Pippa’ refers to a PT-76 war tank, which would later become instrumental in the war owing to its unique abilities to float on water like an empty tin of ghee (clarified butter), and which Balli had mastered during his trial runs with it.
The film, which is now streaming on Prime Video, attempts to capture the journey of three siblings – Ram (Khatter), Balram (Painyuli) and Radha (Thakur) – and their individual contributions to the country and the war. Parallelly, their entangled and complicated relations with each other, their own demons, and their relations with others around them are also explored.
Despite portraying a never-before-explored element of India’s post-independence history, the film lets itself down by complicating and over-populating itself with sub-plots. The film hopes to explore each character in depth but fails to consider factors like time-constraints, scope, and storytelling limitations of the medium itself.
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The screenplay and direction cannot do justice to what could’ve been a potentially good film. War films in the Indian cinema of late have honed the skill of fast-paced and successful storytelling. Films like ‘Uri, for instance, provide a crisp storyline which successfully balance characterisation, personal loss, conflict and heroism into a neat and concise package.
That said, it would be unfair to leave out the mention of the film’s brilliant background score and music, composed by the music genius A.R. Rahman himself, and the exceptionally beautiful cinematography by the talented Priya Seth. Seth has done a truly wonderful job in capturing the natural landscapes and encapsulating the beauty of the land.
The actors have also played their parts well; the strained relationship between the two brothers is brought out well in some key moments in the film, so is Radha’s conflict and their mother’s (Razdan) worry for her two sons out on the warfront. Despite good efforts by the cast, with a lousy screenplay, they too fail to make much of an impact.
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Overall, a really promising storyline with great potential let down by direction and screenplay.