A review of Chakravyuh

The Naxal Movement is one of the burning issues facing India at the moment. When I was 12, I read a Malayalam translation of a Bengali novel on the Naxal uprising in West Bengal in the late 1960’s. The story of those failed rebels was something which stayed on in my mind as a dull ache. So when a leading director like Prakash Jha, picks it up as the subject of his movie, there is no way I could miss it. 

Mr Jha’s ‘Hip Hip Hurray' was one movie which I loved watching while growing up during those Doordarshan days. The more recent Rajneeti is perhaps my favourite Prakash Jha movie.

In Chakravyuh,  Adil Khan (Arjun Rampal) is posted as the Superintendent of Police in Nadhighat, one of the key areas where the Naxal Movement has deep roots. Manoj Bajpai is the much feared Naxal leader Rajan. When Adil Khan tries to find his foothold in his new job, his best friend and dropout from the Police Academy, Kabir (played by Abhay Deol) offers to infiltrate the Naxal ranks and become a police informer. 

As Kabir treads a dangerous path, he slowly starts to understand the anguish of the villagers, who are on the verge of being evicted from their own land by the aspirations of the industrialist Mahanta (Kabir Bedi). Mahanta’s mining group and the politicians who props him up are only concerned about digging up the land the villagers have lived in for eons. Kabir starts sympathising with the naxals, especially with Juhi (Anjali Patil) another firebrand naxalite. 

Mr Jha takes on the role of a neutral observer as the drama unfolds in the forests of Chattisgarh.  It is commendable how he still remains unbiased even till the end of the movie. To enter the dark forests where Naxals reside and to tell their complex story, a cocktail of ideals interspersed with violence and weapons, is no mean task. Jha’s wide angle shots, often with hundreds of actors, are often intense and his control and craft of the medium is terrific to watch.

Of the various actors, the best performance would be of that of Om Puri, who plays the role of an LSE, Oxford educated activist leader and of Manoj Bajpai as Rajan. Arjun Rampal has perhaps got the best role in his career so far. I think he has done justice to it as Adil Khan. It must be tough to play an often harsh police officer with such impossibly good looks (!). Anjali Patil is authentic and she reminded me at times of the late Smitha Patil. Abhay Deol is good, but I feel he is capable of better acting. Esha Gupta was rather unconvincing as a police officer.