Mantostaan, Review by Siraj Syed: Quadruple fiction, laboured narration

Mantostaan is a parallel compilation of four short stories by outstanding writer, late Saadat Hassan Manto. Manto was a short story writer who wrote in the Urdu language, in addition to being a film and radio scriptwriter, and a journalist. For a brief period in the late forties, he worked in the script department of the legendary studio, Bombay Talkies. Born in undivided India, he returned to what was now Pakistan, and died a few years later, aged 43. He published twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, and two collections of personal sketches.

Alternating seamlessly from one work to another, the film showcases four of Manto’s hardest hitting stories, all set in period when the sub-continent was divided into India and Pakistan, in 1947, and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost to mass murders, houses torched, women raped, belongings stolen. The army of the two countries were engaged in firing at the border, over rival claims to Kashmir. The stories are Thanda Gosht, Aakhri Salute, Khol Do and Assignment. His most famous story, Toba Tek Singh, does not find place here.

Aakhri (Last) Salute is about the unusual bonding and friendship between RabNavaaz of the Pakistani army and Ram Singh, who now fights for India. In Assignment, retired judge Mian Abdul Hai of Amritsar is not worried, in spite of rioting and killing around his house. He has two children, a boy of eleven and a girl of seventeen. In addition, there is an old servant who was now pushing seventy. It is a small, happy family, until Hai had a paralytic attack, and someone knocked on the door. Khol Do (Open It) is the story of an unfortunate daughter and her distraught father. Unconscious Sirajuddin regains consciousness after fainting due to shock and fatigue. A succession of images race through his mind. Attack… fire… escape… railway station… night… Sakina. He spends hours searching for his daughter and shouting her name… Sakina! Sakina!… but she is nowhere to be found. Thanda Gosht (Cold Flesh) narrates the events in the life of a man who is on a mission of pillaging and rape. The story revolves around a Sikh man who, in his last breath, accepts to his wife his of raping a dead Muslim girl—hence, the name of the story, Cold Flesh. It is probably the most disturbing of the lot.

There are no heroes or heroines here. Amazing kindness and brutal hatred are both the main players, for all four stories are set in dark times. All three main denominations—Hindu, Muslim and Sikh—who were the main victims of the partition of the country, have black, grey and white players.

Kashmiri origins director Rahat Kazmi (Dekh Bhai Dekh, Identity Card) shot the film in Jammu and Punjab, in areas that did justice to the settings of the stories. His choice of cutting from one story to another to yet another, before coming back cyclically, does not add to the merits of the film. The stories themselves are powerful and stunning, but the transposing on to the movie screen could have been much better. Angst need not mean people gazing into emptiness, speaking very slowly and repeating themselves endlessly. Music has a disturbing feel, which might have been the brief, but it is undistinguished, all the same

A largely unknown cast has been assembled, of which old faithful Rahgubir Yadav, as Sirajuddin, is the most convincing. Another old-timer, Veerendra Saxena, as the Judge is good but could have done much better. Sonal Sehgal (Radio, Aasahyein, Damadamm) as Kulwant Kaur invests a raw earthiness that makes her persona credible.

Raina Bassnet (popular model, who hails from Dehradun; Aasma, Wrist Watch, Virgin Girl) is passable as the Judge’s daughter. Director Kazmi plays RabNavaaz competently, as does Tariq Khan (Ram Singh). Sakshi Bhatt as Sakina has a small role; nevertheless audiences’ hearts will go out to her. Shoaib Shah makes a muscular Ishar Singh but loses impact as he is made to lie bleeding, while recounting his misadventure to his wife.

When a 92-minute film, based on four brilliant short stories, begins to drag, you cannot but help wishing that the director and the editors (Sandeep Singh Bajeli and Dr. Bhanu Pratap Singh) had sharpened their scissors before addressing the footage. Mercifully, there are no songs. Likewise, the director’s infatuation with a jerky, hand-held camera (Laxmi Chand) often gets the better of him. Two high value insertions are a speech by ‘Mahatma’ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, father of the nation and the main architect of India’s independence from British rule,  and the independence address to the nation by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

It’s Manto’s 105^th birthday on May 11, and though Mantostaan is not the best gift to his memory, it is delivered at the right time. Though both Pakistan and Hindustan (India) have staked claim to his legacy, Manto deserves his own place in history, and geography. He now has a Mantostaan dedicated to him. A premiere at Cannes last year must have been a dream come true. But when it comes to rating the film, it will have to pass a strict test, and here it emerges laboured, falling short of expectations.

Rating: **        

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzHtGwND6CM