The Bengal Files

The Bengal Files Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Mithun Chakraborty, Anupam Kher, Pallavi Joshi, Simratt Kaur Randhawa, Saswata Chatterjee, Namashi Chakraborty, Eklavya Sood, Rajesh Khera

Director: Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri

What’s Good: The no-holds-barred depiction of documented truth blended with necessary fiction.

What’s Bad: The brutality and gore are too graphic, and the runtime is excessive.

Loo Break: You might miss necessary parts from the files if you take one!

Watch or Not?: Yes, provided you can endure the brutality of the on-screen genocide.

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 204 Minutes

User Rating:

The film uncovers the stark and real story of Direct Action Day (August 16, 1946)—a dark day in pre-Independent and undivided India when the Muslim League, under Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s direction, unleashed a violent orgy of protest in Bengal when the Indian National Congress did not support his demand for a separate Pakistan.

The film sets its storyline primarily in Bengal’s Noakhali district (though the actual riots had spread to neighbouring states like Punjab, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh). It then shifts the story to 2025, when an honest and passionate CBI officer, Shiva Pandit (Darshan Kumaar), is assigned the task of finding the facts in a missing backward-tribe girl’s case.

Shiva is given the names of two suspects: a woman with dementia named Bharti Banerjee (Pallavi Joshi Agnihotri), who is said to have seen the girl last, and a politician, Sardar Husseini (Saswata Chatterjee), who might be responsible for the missing case as the girl was set on exposing him. Husseini is a Muslim hardliner and has a loyal following. He has no qualms about resorting to violence. For Shiva, it’s an uphill and frustrating assignment in every way.

The Bengal Files Movie Review: Script Analysis

As with The Kashmir Files, Vivek Agnihotri limits real happenings and documents historical truths to a small set of characters for narrative convenience, including two stereotyped villains, the 2025 politician goon Husseini and the despotic butcher in 1946, Ghulam (Namashi Chakraborty).

Bharti Banerjee, when young (Simratt Kaur Randhawa of Gadar 2 fame), is at the forefront of simultaneously fighting both the British and the Muslim fanatics. Her parents are killed during the Direct Action Day holocaust, and she is rescued by a valiant Sikh, Amar Singh Rathod (Eklavya Sood). She is the only survivor of the brutally burnt building in which Hindus had found refuge. Always a staunch patriot, Amar, along with Bharti, offer support to her uncle, Roychowdhury (Divyendu Bhattacharya), who publishes a newspaper that condemns separatism and violence.

Meanwhile, Shiva manages to get the older Bharti to narrate her tragic saga in her moments of clarity, and confronts Husseini, even at the expense of irking his boss, the CBI chief (Puneet Issar). And then, the question surfaces in its various ramifications, even if Jinnah got his separate nation in 1947: is the common Indian really free today? Is he able to live without fear?

That crucial question and how it is dealt with raises this 3-hour session of endless gory deaths to a level where Agnihotri scores high again! I must confess that just after the film ended, I found it needlessly violent (though it sometimes is!!), but after reflection and assimilation, I realized that the film’s script (by Agnihotri himself) is what it is just to indicate the enormity of two issues—what Bengal dealt with then and what is happening today even after 78 years of Independence in free India!

The Bengal Files Movie Review: Star Performance

This cinematic bloodbath of a saga is strobe-lit with a high level of performances from the entire cast. The honors are led by the two Bhartis—Pallavi Joshi Agnihotri and Simratt Kaur Randhawa. Pallavi is magnificently note-perfect as the near-centenarian woman who has so much to say even now, but is handicapped by her age and condition. In her younger avatar, Simratt is the epitome of grace as well as fire. Her eyes are magically expressive, and her monologue about Bengal not being “just another piece of land” but in many ways the country’s wellspring of nationalism is exemplary for such a young artiste, who barely has a handful of films to her credit.

Anupam Kher may not be the best reel Gandhi, but he is certainly effective. And it was a revelation for me that the Mahatma would pronounce the Hindi syllable ‘Sa’ as ‘Sha.’ Rajesh Khera is the perfect Jinnah, a man obsessed with his own straitjacketed views. The scene where he meets his religious compatriot who edits a newspaper and chooses India over migrating to Pakistan is a telling certificate to how Jinnah created so much evil only to gratify his stubborn ego and rabid followers.

Saswata Chatterjee as the amoral Husseini is coldness personified, though Madalsa Sharma as his wife, Divyendu Bhattacharya as Roychowdhury, Priyanshu Chatterjee as Bharti’s father, Puneet Issar as the CBI chief, Anubha Arora as Gauri, Mohan Kapur as Surhawardy and Saurav Das as Gopal Patha (two of the many real characters in the film) have nothing much to do really, but are competent in their roles, especially Das.

Mithun Chakraborty is stupendous as the cynical, passionate, and drunkard cop gone to seed—or more correctly, humiliated enough to lead to that sorry situation. Namashi Chakraborty (his real son) is the epitome of menace as Ghulam. This is his mere second big-screen outing, and he is tremendous in his body language as the ultimate blackguard.

Eklavya Sood as Amar is intensity personified, though Darshan Kumaar, while generally good, is not really up to the histrionic demands of certain high-voltage scenes that he is made to do.