Tag Archives: love jihad

Film Reviews

Film Review: The Kerala Story (2023)

STORY

Shalini takes admission in a college and befriends three other girls in her hostel. One of her roommates Asifa successfully manipulates and misguides Shalini and another girl Geethanjali towards Islam and destroys their lives in deception by love jihad. Consequently, hell breaks on them while seeking heaven.

BACKLASH

‘The Kerala Story‘ sparked nationwide criticism and ignited deadly religious tension in India. Several petitions were filed at the Kerala High Court, the Madras High Court, and the Supreme Court of India to ban the film. Eventually, the West Bengal government banned the film for hate speech.

The Kerala High Court did order to remove the teaser of the film that claimed 32000 girls to have converted to Islam to get recruited to ISIS. 32000? The film begins with a disclaimer stating that there is no authenticity to back the claimed figures. But in one scene, a character does press to be more than thirty and even quotes that the unofficial number is 50,000. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, approximately 30,000 fighters from at least 85 countries had joined the ISIS until December 2015.

BJPWOOD

Although, countless films have been produced in India for decades about Islamic terrorism and the militants waging a holy war or a crusade against India funded by Pakistan. The speciality of ‘The Kerala Story’ is that the film worked on the audience as a reminder to distance themselves from the Muslim community because there is every deliberate chance of pushing you towards Jihad. And especially, if you are a non-Muslim female, then be prepared to spread your legs for “Muslim Mujahideen” as one of the babas suggests in the film to the young recruits to impregnate the girls.

I do not deny about the forced conversions of non-Muslims towards Islam worldwide. This is happening in many countries. And let me inform you that forced conversion is not only a Muslim thing now, this physical and spiritual abuse is happening in all major faiths around the world. Also, keep this in mind that spreading extremism or religious terrorism is completely different than preaching.

Whatever cruelty by the militant fighters is dramatized in the film, without a doubt, half of the madness is accurate. There is no denying about that. But another factor that cannot be denied is that “The Kerala Story” was heavily promoted by the ruling party of India, Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi quoted the film during the Karnataka Assembly Election of 2023. Recently, BJP welcomed the film’s screening by the Idukki diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church for catechism students. And this is not the first time that BJP have raised their voice in favor of such films with similar contents. Remember ‘The Kashmir Files’?

CINEMATIC DISASTER

Another failure is the joke of an execution. Director Sudipto Sen and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah were neither smart about story-telling nor gave a sensible continuity. Engrossed with ordinary dialogues, irritating background score, and ridiculous sense of brainwashing, the film looked completely amateur and first-day first-show debacle.

‘The Kerala Story’ is a propaganda film due to the fact that it was more about the Islamic extremism and the supreme invasion of Islamic terrorism blended with the hows and whys of the religion’s punishments and tortures than growing the unfortunate stories of those girls. The only thing that was good about the film was the performance of Adah Sharma who played the leading character Shalini. The changing of mood, facial expressions, shocks, beliefs, surprises, suffering, tension, the whole body language was there.

CLOSING REMARKS

‘The Kerala Story’ is for those who have fire in their hearts for Muslims and Islam. The film is for those who want to read a conspiracy theory against the religion and beliefs. The film is for the violent protesters who are interested in damaging properties of the Muslims and make them suffer for a few notes of money. The film is for those whose favorite life moment is watching a man on the street burning the Holy Book or looking at the cartoons of some French newspaper.

RATING 1/10

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Film Reviews

Film Review: Afwaah (2023)

STORY

Afwaah is a mystery thriller centralized on two characters, Rahab and Nivi played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Bhumi Pednekar. Rahab is a CEO of a telecom company and Nivi is fiancée of a local politician Vicky. One night, Nivi runs away from Vicky and accidentally crosses path with Rahab when the latter saves her from Vicky’s goons. And then the chase begins.

REVIEW

Veteran filmmaker Sudhir Mishra brings another interesting plot about one horrible night like he made “Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin“. What ‘Afwaah’ gives us in its two-hour presentation is the series of unfortunate incidents that leads us to ridiculous as well as thought-provoking consequences. The core of the purpose was to show the audience how the netizens are manipulated and brainwashed by a lie that ignites with emphasizing on the Islamophobic content of “Love Jihad“.

When Vicky understands that Nivi is running away with a guy named Rahab assumingly a Muslim, Vicky plays a dirty game and allows his social media team to viral their running video and fit the angle of love jihad so that people lose their mind and help him bring Nivi back.

Afwaah’s story and the screenplay started and developed well with all major characters of the plot getting decent minutes and settled the viewers to the focal point. The film gets slow where the character has to grow and picks up the pace when the thrill is required. I think the screen time of 120 minutes was accurate due to important subplots of Vicky’s goon Chandan and police officers Tomar and Riya.

I don’t understand why Tomar didn’t kill Chandan when he saw him in the truck. Why did he scan the truck and interrogated the driver instead of easily catching Chandan who was sleeping?

Are Tata Motors one of the producers of the film? I ask because their car Range Rover driven by Rahab falls in the ditch and later one of the goons speaks highly about the car, reckons the price and even talks about selling it for a higher price. That was an unnecessary scene too.

KEEPING RAHAB ALIVE WAS WRONG

The film gave Nivi a deserving conclusion. But I am absolutely not convinced with keeping Rahab alive somehow. The gate of the festival was closed after his viral video with Nivi and Rahab’s wife kept protesting over the decision that fall on deaf ears. Rahab desperately kept hitting the gate to get in but the media brainwashing won over him. After Chandan stabbed Rahab, he must have died with injustice. The dialogue that he uttered to his wife that his death will be a total waste if he died were fittingly the character’s final words and must have cried these words when he was stabbed. Had he died, the purpose of the film would have been served, the word ‘Afwaah’ would have won, the lie would have defeated the truth. Sadly, Bollywood maintained keeping the hero of the film alive.

CLOSING REMARKS

I want to thank Sudhir ji for not making Rahab and Nivi fall in love with each other. Afwaah, without a doubt, deserves the praise for a thought provoking story followed by an impressive screenplay. Nawaz was superb as usual but the real winner was Bhumi. Watch her argument with Vicky, escaping from goons, when she humiliates the boy, and her scenes outside the gate. She was fabulous. Afwaah successfully shows the viewers how a political denunciation brings hatred and divides the communities through media manipulation.

When I finished watching Afwaah, I remembered that Rahab lectured to the audience about why he came back from the US. Because he wanted to contribute to his country. And see what happened. Where this passion led to? A viral video almost killed him because his name was Rahab. Because he was assumed that he is one of those Muslims who would take a Hindu girl, convert her religion or marry her to produce Muslim children, and pace down the Hindu population and accelerate and do favor to the fastest growing religion in the world. All this was poisoned to all the netizens through a viral video.

RATING 8/10

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