Rahul Desai
Radio silence might have served history better than this film. 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.
A fine story but the telling is messed up. It’s to slam the casting, deafening background score, and staging. And it’s to question the film’s naive reading of history. fundamentally fails at the three E’s: Engagement, education, and entertainment.
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
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.
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.
It reflects 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.