Raj S. Rangarajan 
Sunita Sharma & Irfan Khan (Photo courtesy of Miramax Films)
Irfan Khan (Photo courtesy of Miramax Films)
You have perhaps seen it all: the macabre, the bizarre, violent beheadings and other cruel acts in the name of drama and cinematic effect. Directors offering brutality and revenge, horror and suspense Рas themes, have perhaps also enthralled you. Today, even children, who are constantly exposed to so many violent scenes on the home television screen or on cinema, seem blas̩.
Somehow Warrior is different and powerful. Part of the reason is the male lead’s personality portrayed superbly by Irfan Khan (Maqbool, Charas) and secondly, thanks are due to writer-director Asif Kapadia’s directorial brilliance blended with Roman Osin’s creative genius behind the camera. Osin treats Rajasthan’s vast desert expanse with scorpions, anacondas – the undulating dunes and ancient forts at 120 degrees temperature – like his backyard and manages to make the viewer feel reassured when admiring the lush greens of himalayan Himachal Pradesh.
Lafcadia (Khan), a skilled Rajput is ruthless, capable and efficient. A local chieftan (Anupam Shyam) uses Lafcadia to carry out savage punishments, beheadings and raids of villages: scenes reminiscent of the 19th century when such killings were commonplace. One day, while being involved in a bloody massacre, Lafcadia decides to give up his violent ways. In a sudden meeting with a young girl (Sunita Sharma) who has been friendly with his son (Puru Chhibber), Lafcadia decides to change. He prays at a local shrine, drops his sword and decides never to kill again. While he vows to change, the warlord was not about to let Lafcadia go.
If you like grit, manliness, strength and leadership in your films you will like this Warrior. Khan follows his sense of duty before becoming a dissident, and soon his conscience takes over. The movie depicts one man trying to change his own life beyond vengeance and Lafcadia, who lives in a harsh world, is keen on becoming a better person – a better father. It caters to a certain kind of genre – and as co-screenwriters Tim Miller and Kapadia say, the source for the story came from a Japanese folk tale wherein a young man training to be a samurai, is shown a severed head and its significance. Warrior probes a similar query as to why this warrior decides to give up the life of killings.
Kapadia has preferred to pick non-actors for some roles “because they’re more likely to have stronger faces and looks…non-professional actors can get across so much information without saying a word.” One such non-professional he picked was Annuddin who, in playing the role of Biswas, has to hunt down Lafcadia and bring back his head. Another novice that the British director selected was Noor Mani, picked up from an Indian shelter for homeless kids who play a street-smart thief.
With his own son being killed at the behest of the warlord, Lafcadia takes on Mani as a friend who accompanies him on his flight for peace and freedom. In a soft scene, Lafcadia shows his human touch when he mischievously moves the eating plate away from Mani.
Osin won the Technical Achievement Award for cinematography at the British Independence Film Awards. Kapadia, raised in Hackney in East London, who reportedly took up directing quite by chance, has managed to turn ordinary villagers into actors and it is particularly creditable since its his directorial debut. His graduate film – The Sheep Thief, when he was studying at The Royal College of Art in London, won the Jury Prize at Cannes and the Grand Prix at the European Short Film Festival in Brest.
Irfan Khan, who has appeared in the Bollywood erotic mystery Rog, received a fellowship to study at the National School of Drama, and is slated to appear in Mira Nair’s The Namesake based on a bestseller by Jhumpa Lahiri.
In the final analysis, one is tempted to ask: Did the movie have a purpose? Was it entertainment? Was it history? Was it anger? Was it duty? Or, was it a combination of all of the above? The violence and angst of the portrayals are so intense that a viewer will either tolerate the movie or reject it completely.
But, then aren’t so many films these days polarizing?
[Raj S. Rangarajan is a New York based freelance writer. He covers trend stories on art, travel and lifestyles and reviews books, films and plays for media based in New York, California, Toronto, India and Australia.]
