A heartfelt 'Thank You!!!' to the team that made this awesome movie. I want to salute their effort. The only movie before this that had made me feel so proud of the quality that Punjabi cinema is capable of, was Shaheed-e- Mohabbat Buta Singh. Punjab 1984 is simply the BEST movie that I have ever seen, across languages.
Both my husband and I are children of rural Punjab, and so, could identify deeply with the milieu depicted in the movie and with the pain of the characters. We cried at multiple points in the movie and came out of the theater in gloomy silence. It's been six hours since then and all that we have talked about is the movie's characters and the Punjab situation in those days. Never before has a movie overwhelmed me like this.
This movie has accommodated all perspectives and most importantly, has shown the perspective of the common man, which is generally ignored in most narratives of a religious-political conflict. It is a poignant depiction of the suffering the common people underwent due to the political shenanigans of the leaders (of both sides - the government and the revolutionaries) of the time. It shows the helplessness of youth, of both Jat Sikh and Hindu communities, who are prosecuted by the dishonest people in the police system and the dishonest people in the movement. The movie takes care to balance the audience's perspective by showing that not all policemen or all revolutionaries were bad.
I feel very proud that as a society, Punjab has bounced out of this nightmare within a decade.
Food for thought: We could hardly bear the vicarious pain of the characters for 2-and-a-half hours. We cannot begin to imagine how people who actually lived it all would have borne it for their lifetime.
