Bawaal movie review: When World War II plays cupid

That I could not stand Ajju Bhaiya for even a split-second in Bawaal is a testimony to how seasoned Dhawan has become at playing such men. Janhvi Kapoor is also sincere as Nisha. There is a subdued vulnerability, a quiet innocence about her performance that makes you want to protect her. But the film doesn’t give her much to do. Moreover, even the best actors cannot save a script this ridiculous or tone-deaf or hell-bent on contorting and belittling global events as epochal and cataclysmic as World War II to resolve petty, nuptial conflicts.

Bawaal credits four men for its screenplay and dialogue—Nitin Mehrotra, Shreyas Jain, Piyush Gupta, and director Nitesh Tiwari. The story is by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, who has directed the terrific Nil Battey Sannata (2016) and the thoroughly enjoyable Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017). But Bawaal utterly lacks the mojo or the common sense that is so firmly rooted in these films or even Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal (2016). Not threadbare, the plot is downright silly. And their on-the-nose, over-simplified understanding and depiction of the horrors of the Second World War, outright offensive.

Ajju is suspended for slapping a local politico’s son. He is yet to complete the portion on WWII. Barred from entering the school, he decides to visit the European cities that were worst impacted and teach students through videos filmed live on location. Not out of a deep sense of duty. But to create a spectacle so blinding, that it obliterates all else. He uses Nisha as bait to get his father of modest means to sponsor the two-week vacation to Paris, Normandy, Krakow, Berlin, and Auschwitz, claiming that it might help them repair their fractured marriage. I know. It’s nothing short of a wonder that we have a full-length feature film on an idea this inane.

The rest of the film peters out exactly like you would expect. After seeing what hundreds and thousands of Jews went through and finding out that Nisha is too good for a jerk like him, Ajju has a change of heart. He’s still a monkey, but one intent on cleaning up his act. Bawaal is audacious enough to field dialogues such as “Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz”, reduce the horrors of Hitler to our greed to have more, and imagine its lead pair going through what the inmates of concentration camps did. I understand that our everyday woes might sometimes feel like the end of the world, but to actually compare it with the inhumane genocide of Jews? I also understand that travel gives one perspective and is potent enough to inspire change, but to use the sites of mass death and destruction to spark romance? We sure have hit a new low.

Right after visiting Anne Frank’s secret annex, Ajju asks Nisha what she would do if it was her last day. The sequence that follows is a charming, intimate portrait of two people getting to know each other for the first time despite living together for 10 months. If only Bawaal had more of that. If only it understood that you don’t have to distort what’s outside to fix yourselves from within.