Role reversal In Batwara 1947: Sunny Deol Is Still Beating Up The Baddies, But This Time He Plays A Muslim Man | Ashwini Sawant
Director Rajkumar Santoshi’s partition drama Batwara 1947 shall be releasing on August 14 and stars Shabana Azmi, Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta, Karan Deol, Ali Fazal, and Abhimanyu Singh. The music is composed by A. R. Rahman, while the lyrics are penned by Javed Akhtar, and the film marks the much-awaited reunion of Rajkumar Santoshi and Sunny Deol after nearly three decades.The film’s trailer launch, which took place on Tuesday and where The Free Press Journal was present, was an emotionally charged one, with Shabana tearing up while recalling a particular incident during filming, and a visibly emotional Sunny throughout, sometimes because of talks related to his late father, Dharmendra, and other times when his son Karan was mentioned.
The trailer is very high on melodrama, along with bad guys flying when Sunny hits them, and could be said to be a film which deserved its place 25 years ago, during the Gadar era. However, a welcome change here is that Sunny, known for playing the angry Sikh/Jat in films like this, plays a Muslim, and for that alone, Santoshi deserves a hat tip.
The main whistle-worthy moment arrives when a man tells Karan, “Tu ustad ko nahi janta,” to which he replies, “Tu mere baap ko nahi janta.” The movie, poised to be about humanity amid the Partition, the Aamir Khan production serves a binding touch with dialogues where Sunny’s character reprimands an individual by telling him how mothers have no religion; they are a religion themselves, and “Mandir todna Islam nahi hai.”
We fought 16 years to make this film: Rajkumar Santoshi“When I had shared the story with Sunny, he had become charged after hearing it. And actually, we’ve been trying to make this film for the last 16 years, but we were not getting the support which was needed for it. This has been like a tapasya for me. Aamir has actually told me that whenever I write anything for Sunny (Damini, Ghayal, Ghatak), it comes out very well. In fact, he told me to write something for Sunny, and then remove him and put Aamir instead!” Rajkumar shared during the trailer launch.
Sunny made me feel like his mother: Shabana Azmi“The film has been made with a lot of truth, and it doesn’t take any sides. It takes a universal pain and personalizes it. Films like this will prevent a genocide like this from ever happening again.”“There is a particular scene visible in the trailer where the villain is dragging me and tears my kurta, and I don’t think I have ever felt as vulnerable and exposed as a human being at that point. And believe you me, when Sunny came and put back my dupatta, I felt like he was my son. And if, after 50 years in the industry, I can feel something like that towards my co-actor, those seeing the movie shall feel it too,” Shabana said, getting teary-eyed while sharing this snippet.
Partition stories stay with me: Sunny Deol“Raj and my combination is such that we keep challenging each other, and many times there is retake after retake. It is a pity that it took so much time for us to get back together. I don’t know why.” The Free Press Journal also asked Sunny if there was any new aspect about the Partition that he came to know about during the making of the film, to which he started his reply by making the disarmingly frank statement, “Jaisa ki aap jaante hain, main padhta likhta kam hoon.”“These are stories which I have heard from others. I am from Punjab, and during the Partition, my grandfather, the whole family, was there. What they also told me was that almost in every village where violence would take place, there would always be families who would save others by hiding them in their houses. There are many stories like this, which I would not want to mention at this moment. I was lucky to have spent a lot of time in Punjab and to have connection with all the things that happened there.”