Film review | Kya Dilli Kya Lahore
A whine trail along the Indo-Pak border
It’s 1948, a year after Indian independence, but the Indo-Pak border is still aching with hurt from Partition-inflicted wounds. Two men symbolise this hurt—Indian cook Samarth (Manu Rishi), who’s left behind to take care of his outpost, and Pakistani soldier (Vijay Raaz) Rehmat, who’s sent to the Indian side to retrieve a vital map. They meet at the outpost, trade barbs for most of the movie, but eventually realise that they are both victims of a problem not of their making.
Perhaps realising the scantiness of the premise, Raaz, who makes his debut as a director, keeps the narrative to a trim 98 minutes. Even at this modest running length, Kya Dilli Kya Lahore feels stretched and half-baked, less of a big-screen experience and better suited to an intimate stage production. The accusations and counter-accusations traded by Samarth and Rehmat—much of it in un-subtitled Punjabi—aren’t particularly insightful about the intractable problems plaguing both nations, while the overwhelming sense of nostalgia for an undivided India doesn’t do the Pakistanis justice. The contrivances of the characters’ origins lock them into a mournfulness that is ultimately trying. Rehmat is a mojahir from Delhi, while Samarth has been displaced from Lahore. Raaz musters up the tragedy required to transmit Rehmat’s sense of loss, but Rishi’s wailing turn is too broad and mono-tonal to convey his plight.
Without the absurdity of No Man’s Land, in which a Bosnian Muslim and a Bosnian Serb find themselves trapped in a ditch, there is little respite from the ceaseless whining. More interesting than the lament for a time lost is the commentary on the lower class status of the two characters. Oppressed by their superior-minded superiors (Raj Zutshi and Vishwajeet Pradhan) and treated as waiters and dirt, the two men finally find common cause over their horrible bosses. Whether it’s Dilli or Lahore, there’s nothing like a nasty overlord to get those empathy juices flowing.
Kya Dilli Kya Lahore released in theatres on Friday
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