Why is Waar a Poor Propaganda Flick

Being a movie buff, I could not ignore the hype of a Pak­istani movie rat­ed 9/10 on imdb.com. So, I bought this DVD of Waar as soon as I saw the poster of its avail­abil­i­ty on a local shop. Cut­ting the chase, there was I watch­ing it while a sim­i­lar Islam­abad fias­co of Imran Khan was being unfold­ed on 13th August; Superb choice on Inde­pen­dence Day, eh?

To my dis­ap­point­ment, the open­ing scene of the movie was so sub­stan­dard that a movie rat­ed 3 on imdb would be bet­ter off. Two men in an inter­ro­ga­tion room were hav­ing the sacks removed from their heads. And lo and behold it seemed like the guy just exit­ed a saloon after a per­fect hair­cut, fresh­ly trimmed beard and even whiten­ing pow­der applied on his face. The much-talked about ‘tal­ent­ed’ young direc­tor could do bet­ter than that. Any­ways, at last I was watch­ing the most await­ed movie, which is, in fact, an epic amal­ga­ma­tion of offi­cial Pak­istan stud­ies cur­ricu­lum and pop­u­lar con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries – sure­ly what more could be expect­ed from an ISPR pro­duc­tion.

Waar seemed to me more like a bad copy of Ghar Kab Aaoge (GKAG), a Pak­istani movie I had watched in my teenage. Apart from cheeky com­put­er effects of Pyaray Afzal being blown up (after anoth­er recent sad demise), flash­ing toy guns, fake shot of heli­copter blow­ing up (prob­a­bly also copied from GKAG), Shamoon Abbasi think­ing him­self Cas­tor Troy but actu­al­ly copy­ing Shafqat Cheema, absence of a sub­stan­tial sto­ry, poor cin­e­matog­ra­phy, typ­i­cal Lol­ly­wood dra­ma, Shaan being Ray­mond Davis of Pak­istan, counter-ter­ror­ist squad of 3 peo­ple like Lan­g­ley, and loop­holes in the sto­ry (like why are army gen­er­als run­ning the police, and why was Shaan’s fam­i­ly killed?), below are my major con­cerns about the movie.

1. Pak Studies Discourse

After so much pub­lic debate on tra­di­tion­al and the new media, every­one should be well aware of the con­tro­ver­sies about our edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. If you are still obliv­i­ous, please read K. K. Aziz’s Mur­der of His­to­ry. The movie reit­er­ates the same nar­ra­tive that the coun­try was made in the name of Islam and not for a Mus­lim minor­i­ty feared to be dis­crim­i­nat­ed in unit­ed India, among oth­ers. The real champs of moral­i­ty are glo­ri­fied, like always.

2. Popular Conspiracy Theories

Dush­man (ene­my) has instat­ed agents and spy net­work inside the holy land and is behind every mess in the coun­try. RAW is behind every ill in the coun­try be it a “good” politi­cian’s killing, Tal­iban phe­nom­e­non, or even a toi­let leak­age.

3. Stereotyping

Tal­iban and extrem­ists are basi­cal­ly Pathans who can kill their fathers too for their vicious agen­das fund­ed by RAW. Yes, Bait­ul­lah, Fazlul­lah and Sufi Moham­mad were Push­tun but what about sup­port­ers of Molvi Nazir group, Colonel Imam, Ilyas Kash­miri, Riaz Bas­ra, Lud­hi­an­wi, Malik Ishaq, Asmat­ul­lah Muawiya, Hafiz Saeed, Azam Tariq and Masood Azhar?

4. Messiah Syndrome

Only a mes­si­ah like politi­cian named Zahid “Khan” can save the day. RAW is against mes­si­ahs too. The mes­si­ah is sup­posed to be aggres­sive towards all oth­er politi­cians who are all cor­rupt to the core, while the cool inno­cent mes­si­ah him­self can have extra­mar­i­tal affairs, live lav­ish­ly, even drink alco­hol, and still utter phras­es like Islam kay naam pe (In the name of Islam). He is also bril­liant enough to col­lect funds from poor peo­ple for the con­struc­tion of a dam. Just off the top­ic, does Bilal Lashari belong to PTI?

5. Objectification of Women

Mes­si­ahs who can have extra­mar­i­tal rela­tion­ships are also lured by promis­cu­ous women who are in fact under­cov­er agents of RAW. There is no fault of the men at all, and when they dump the girl, they become absolute­ly clean.

6. Self-Righteousness

A true patri­ot Pak­istani is the one who par­rots things like yakeene muhkam (absolute faith) quite often, apart from that he can have extra­mar­i­tal sex­u­al affairs, can drink, and live as he wants. On the oth­er hand, madras­sa stu­dents and Tal­iban are homo­sex­u­al bear­dos who are con­trolled by RAW.

7. Foreign Policy Guidelines

USA is respon­si­ble for every­thing in Pak­istan and no dic­ta­tion should be accept­ed from them; a typ­i­cal ‘Go Amree­ka Go’ stance of the rightwing par­ties who would nev­er acknowl­edge the role of home grown extrem­ism, sec­tar­i­an­ism, ter­ror­ism, feu­dal­ism, past mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ships, and oth­er fac­tors respon­si­ble for country’s ills.

8. Kala Bagh Dam

The Kala Bagh dam is the only solu­tion of ener­gy cri­sis in the coun­try and any politi­cian, polit­i­cal par­ty or even province hav­ing con­cerns about the dam is a trai­tor. There was a com­plete iso­la­tion of Sindh and KPK’s respec­tive stances on the dam and a pure glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Pun­jabi elites’ dic­ta­to­r­i­al nar­ra­tive.

The end of the movie was also quite typ­i­cal. Shaan asks Shamoon (the vil­lain) to fight him with bare hands and the movie ends with a James bond style pis­tol shot by Shaan. This was extreme­ly gross and shows a com­plete lack of cre­ativ­i­ty. How­ev­er, it was more dis­ap­point­ing to see that the movie rep­re­sent­ed the typ­i­cal jin­go­ist mind­set; it rein­forces the already exist­ing denial and lack of respon­si­bil­i­ty in the soci­ety. The good cast worked well as a mar­ket­ing attrac­tion for urban youth. If Pak­istani cin­e­ma is to be revived by such dis­hon­est pro­pa­gan­da movies, then we are bet­ter off with­out a cin­e­ma.