Ae Watan Mere Watan Review: How Not to Make a Historical Biopic

Director: Kannan Iyer

Writers: Darab Farooqui, Kannan Iyer
Cast: Sara Ali Khan, Sparsh Shrivastava, Emraan Hashmi, Alexx O’Nell, Abhay Verma, Sachin Khedekar

Duration: 132 mins

Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video

The easy way is to lash out at Ae Watan Mere Watan and say that it’s a terrible film. It’s to declare that this is yet another Hindi period biopic that looks and sounds like a high-school cosplay production. It’s to quip that it feels like the feature-length extension of Bawaal’s World War II flashbacks. It’s to lament the lost opportunity of again choosing a fine story, only to mess up the telling. It’s to slam the casting, deafening background score and staging. And it’s to question the film’s naive reading of history. But these are the superficial ways of panning a movie – in excess and hyperbole. The challenge is to temper this criticism with reasoning and sanity. It’s to figure out precisely why Ae Watan Mere Watan – a 132-minute biographical drama set in 1940s Bombay – took me half a day to finish watching. It’s to explain exactly why the film fundamentally fails at the three E’s: Engagement, education and entertainment. 

Failing History

The Kannan Iyer-directed film revolves around Usha Mehta (Sara Ali Khan), a young woman who starts an underground radio station during India’s freedom struggle in 1942. This covert station, Congress Radio, and its broadcasting of speeches by imprisoned freedom fighters, reignites the Quit India movement, and spreads messages of resistance and unity across a nation whose channels of communication had been snapped by the British Raj. Given the modern influence of social media in the making and breaking of governments, the premise is all the more significant. The film is rooted in the information-disseminating role of early technology, back when the sound of voices on a radio sparked the sort of imagination and mass hysteria that no visuals could replicate. It’s also defined by an old-school secularism – where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians combine in the fight, unaware of the partitions ahead. For a film that’s all about listening and being seen, then, it’s ironic that Ae Watan Mere Watan makes a remarkable real-life story look so...fictional. By that I don’t mean inauthentic or implausible; it’s more like fake and theoretical, where every character and emotion looks over-designed and undercooked at once. At times, it becomes an unwitting spoof of a period drama. It’s too early – and controversial – to crack an artificial intelligence (AI) pun, but we’re getting there.

The trouble begins early. Usha’s father (Sachin Khedekar), a judge, speaks like an exposition device masquerading as an establishment man. He’s a Winston Churchill stan who, unlike his daughter, swears by the merits of colonialism. But he insists on delivering a brief nutshell of the British Raj instead. They don’t exchange dialogue so much as read out their own character sketches – it’s like verbalizing the script notes (usually subtext meant to guide the director), where people formally narrate their feelings and positions, and talk of their purpose through the lens of hindsight. It’s as if they’re being shaped by the perspectives of 2024: Each of them look capable of producing a meme or a reel. When Usha accuses her father of hating his own country, it looks like she’s calling him an anti-national on Instagram. Even the famous chants of “karo ya maro” (do or die) sound like auto-tuned riffs of big-city mimicry. When Usha leaves the house, her goodbye letter reads, “Main aapke sneh ke pinjre main kaid hu (I’m trapped in the cage of your love)” while her father theatrically weeps to his aunt. The lack of nuance is staggering for a screenplay that platforms clandestine courage. 

Claims to Pain

Several other figures commit the same crime – of interacting like info-bots – through the film . At least twice, a Parsi engineer (introduced as a chap who sings and dances with his lover) mentions the British have banned public radio stations. When in ideological doubt, the writing resorts to vague lyricism. At one point, Usha asks socialist leader Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia (Emraan Hashmi; all-round sincerity does not suit him) if they’re diverting from Gandhi’s philosophies in their pursuit of defiance. His reply – which arrives while he’s using a charkha (spinning wheel) with the serenity of a sepia-toned museum slideshow – equates Gandhi with sach (truth) while calling their own mission sahi (right). Ah, the sweet-smelling khadi of diplomacy. At another point, Usha and her polio-afflicted ally Fahad (Sparsh Shrivastava) must decide who amongst them can carry out the riskiest broadcast yet. It’s almost a suicide mission, but both are equally willing. What follows is the weirdest claim-to-pain debate: Fahad alludes to his “incomplete body” so that this sacrifice can make him complete, and Usha retorts by saying that she is a woman. Apparently, it’s a tie. She then suggests a race to exploit his limp. I wish I were making this up.  

Needless to mention, nearly every person is a booming caricature. The writing shies away from exploring Usha’s spartan Gandhian lifestyle; she looks too millennial to be a freedom purist. Instead, her celibacy is revealed through an almost-romance with a colleague, Kaushik (Abhay Verma), who isn’t as brave as she is. He loves her more than the country, which here translates to: Tearfully riding away on his cycle multiple times. Even when he isn’t crying, he seems to be crying. Their platonic love story could have been an interesting point of conflict, but the film chooses to paint him as a vintage hero with chocolate-boy ambitions. Old Bollywood habits die hard. Most of the British high command is depicted in various degrees of “Find Congress Radio and finish them!” scowls. The one bad Indian cop is seen smoking.

Breaking Points

Then there’s the evil English villain named John Lyre (Alexx O’Nell), who appears in a sinister leather jacket and leather gloves, fashioned as a Nazi inspector who’s wandered onto the wrong side of war politics. This officer walks like a Tarantino baddie and talks like a Lagaan loyalist. John’s job is to track down the hidden Congress Radio team from a signal detection van every night – but they keep slipping away in clumsily edited chases before broadcasting from a different area. John has an affinity for the Hindi term “tod (fix)” while delivering his threats. So he seems mighty pleased with himself when he does wordplay like “tod ka tod” followed by “tod ka tod ka tod” when he refers to the Indians being one step ahead. Another night and his tod fixation might have turned into a ‘todu’ rap song. Apologies, but I’m aiming for puns with mainstream potential.

The uneven thrills of this cat-and-mouse game feature Usha being frisked in a mosque and leaping out of a dark bungalow in a hat and trenchcoat. The action lacks cohesiveness, creativity and continuity. She can have outwrestled a cobra and she’d be perfectly still in the next shot. In terms of score and buildup, there’s no difference between a revolutionary being murdered and a person drinking tea; it’s just as loud and melodramatic. This is a performance problem, too. Usha’s passion and patriotism come across as crazed traits. Every love – especially one that’s internalized by freedom fighters – can be construed as a language of madness, but Sara Ali Khan’s rendition is too literal. As a result, the exchanges have a cult-like edge to them; it’s one thing to be obsessed, it’s another to be possessed. The word “kranti” (revolution) is repeated often, but the force is only felt on paper. 

The final issue with Ae Watan Mere Watan is its simplistic cause-and-effect syndrome. Time doesn’t pass; it collapses. Montages don’t emerge; they just happen. If the intent is to show the radio catalyzing sentiments across the country, the reaction time clocks ‘wildfire’ on a scale of 1 to 10. The effect is immediate, nothing less – cue riot, cue flag-waving incident, cue violence and protests. (For context, think of Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani and its climax; the citizens get a few minutes to take the streets after the hero’s plea for support). The entire climax is determined by instant plight. John races against time to locate a team that plays Dr. Lohia’s crucial speech. The impact of words spreads so readily that you feel like berating John for struggling to open a door. It’s all very convenient and compressed, reflecting the pitfalls of a film that refuses to humanize the concept of radio silence in an age of media blackouts and suppression. There is no tod for a story that unfolds like a pre-Independence email stuck in the drafts folder.