Mujib: The Making of a Nation Review: It Barely Qualifies as a Film

Rahul Desai

Directed By Shyam Benegal

As a film critic, it doesn’t get more disheartening than watching a terrible movie by a pioneering director. Especially if the name alone conveys the iconography of a culture. 

The Last Thing You Want To Do Is Criticize The Most Basic Elements

The cosplay-level performances, dated visual effects, silly wigs, Wikipedia-lite structure, history-for-dummies writing, infomercial tone, press-release approach, absence of narrative continuity, or the absence of film-making in general.

The Junior Artists Look Like Nobody’s Briefed Them

A body flinches a second after being shot dead. Despite the school-level VFX, the film insists on having war sequences and scaled-up backgrounds. 

Benegal's Previous Biopic

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2004), lacked technical prowess too, but at least it had an ideological frankness that made it worth debating over.

The Icing On This Stale Cake

There is long-drawn assassination sequence in a bungalow that plays out like the tasteless reverse of the Zero Dark Thirty (2012) raid. There’s no reason to show children getting slaughtered, unless the intent is to provoke rage against a nation.