Movie Mahal

Actor and director Aamir Bashir’s debut film Harud (Autumn) was released in 2010, thirteen years ago. Bashir’s latest film Maagh (The Winter Within) comes after a decade, and it is a very accomplished work. I’m not sure why it has taken Bashir this long to make another film, but I can imagine funding for seemingly political films about Kashmir that disrupt the official narrative might be a tangible obstacle. It comes as no surprise that Maagh, another film set in Kashmir, and which deals with the martial tensions of a newly married couple torn apart by a neo-colonial trauma of illegal detention and occupation, builds on the daring political machinations of Harud.

This time round Maagh evidences a far more ambitious aesthetic approach. The sparse pictorial style is manifested through DOP Shanker Raman’s ghostly wintry landscapes while the quasi-noir underexposed interiors, the intimate close ups of Nargis (Zoya Hussain doing some of the best work of her career) and the windows/doors accentuate an imprisonment and desolation. At times, there is a tableau dimension to many of the sequences which gives the film an impressionist quality, distinctively painterly, that reminded me of both Iranian cinema and the work of Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Moreover, the sound design is brilliantly conceptualised, subtly disturbing the narrative world and reminding us of the war and occupation beyond the frame. Additionally, the score by Naren Chandavarkar & Benedict Taylor is probably their best collaboration to date; the rabab and viola combining to create a haunting reverie.

Nargis, who is degradingly referred to as a ‘half widow’, is on the hunt for her husband Manzoor (Manzoor Ahmed Bhat) who has been picked up by the Indian security forces and illegally detained for his ongoing participation in the rebellion. Unlike Harud, here the central narrative is through the eyes of a woman, bringing into sharp focus the broader impact of occupation on the everyday, ordinary lives of women who are also victims of colonial oppression. Nargis works as a domestic servant for a wealthy Kashmiri family in Srinagar. She is soon fired from her job when the family discovers she is still searching for her missing husband. Nargis returns to her village and spends the days and nights in front of a loom weaving an epic shawl, a powerfully symbolic manifestation of her patience, resilience, and creativity, defying the occupation. The image of the waiting woman is a resolutely political one in Indian cinema and the steadfast imagining of Nargis recalls Balo in Uski Roti, Nita in Meghe Dhaka Tara and Sonbai in Mirch Masala, contributing to a broader and enduring feminist iconography.

But this is expressly a story about disappearance, trauma, and the state sanctioned murder of so many young men in Kashmir who have been picked up, illegally detained, and brutally tortured by an occupying Indian army. For those young men who are released like Manzoor, they live in a perpetual state of mental and physical trauma. Returning to live with Nargis, Manzoor emerges as a spectral figure. Paralysed, broken, and carrying the scars of torture he is unable to reconnect with society, unable to even have a normal conversation with his wife. The trauma is relentless since Manzoor’s release is merely an illusion. Asked to report to the military camp on a regular basis, Manzoor is subjected to psychological humiliation, the security forces chipping away at what dignity remains and completely altering his psyche.

The parallels with the imperialist genocidal horrors unfolding in Palestine and Gaza right now strikes a notable chord of dissent, speaking to us about the human cost of occupation. When the young boy Arif jokingly says that he too will become militant is nothing short of tragic but also undeniably defiant against the crimes perpetrated against the ordinary people of Kashmir. Maagh becomes a reminder of the broader geographical intersections of colonial oppression, the traumas of colonialism and the willingness to resist, to struggle and strive for justice.