Every life doesn’t necessarily yield a compelling on-screen biopic. Though Sarbjit Singh and his family’s story is an immensely tragic tale of wasted lives and relationships, the film seems to lack the vital dramatic grip to keep the viewer invested in. What the film does have in ample measure are portrayals of interminable struggles, candlelight protests, hunger strikes, paperwork, ineffectual officialdom on the India side, protracted incarceration, and inhuman tortures on the other side of the border. Not quite the kind to set the screen on fire.
Sarbjit, a farmer from Punjab, alleged to be terrorist Manjeet Singh (called Ranjeet in the film) in Pakistan, was convicted for the Lahore and Faislabad bomb attacks of 1990. While the family version claims that he innocently strayed into Pakistan in a drunken stupor, the Pakistan side has been consistently painting him as an undercover agent of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). His death sentence kept getting postponed till he was killed by his Lahore jail inmates in 2013 and his organs went missing mysteriously.
Director Omung Kumar is unable to fashion an affecting script out of more than two decades of a family’s futile fight against the political and diplomatic machinery. Instead of a coherent narrative, the film feels utterly disjointed. The film moves in fits and spurts, without a focus, in all directions and back and forth in time. The characters and relationships are sketchily grounded. The closeness of the siblings is stated, but there is nothing on screen to make us believe in the bond. The brother-sister chemistry doesn’t leap out from the screen. On top of that, the director doesn’t seem to know how to calibrate emotions well. He goes overboard with melodrama. So you have Aishwarya Rai as Daljit who is loud, made to scream and shout and weep buckets to show her anguish.
– Namrata Joshi
Sarbjit
Director: Omung Kumar
Starring: Aishwarya Rai, Randeep Hooda, Richa Chaddha, Darshan Kumar
