On the weekend of September 11, twenty years after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the airwaves are a backwash of cloying, maudlin commemorations. Every TV station, cable and otherwise, is clogged with documentaries and sober retrospective analysis -- it's either appallingly jingoistic, nauseatingly sentimental, or misconceived. All historical events appear necessary and foreordained and, therefore, all mistakes in judgment, also, seem to be callous and willfully stupid. But, of course, history looks back from the comfortable thrones of present knowledge -- but people are condemned to live their lives in ignorance of the future. The study of history doesn't prevent bad decisions from being made -- that is, history repeating itself. It just causes those past mistakes to seem all the more painful since, in retrospect, every bad outcome is avoidable. So the TV shows infesting the air-waves are, at once, smug and weirdly indignant. And, of course, the displays of patriotic nationalism, an emotion that everyone seems to ordain as just and appropriate, are unseemly and contrived. These documentaries want to chronicle events from two opposing and incommensurate viewpoints -- the horror was all avoidable, mistakes were made, and, yet, everyone in sight was courageous, patriotic, a hero (even when one's heroism consists of nothing more than being passively blown to pieces.) It doesn't make any sense, particularly with the ghastly collapse of Afghanistan to the barbaric Taliban and there's nothing to celebrate, of course, and nothing new about any of the footage displayed or the talking heads pontificating on that subject. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
So, I have found a particularly contrarian and nasty anodyne to this tide of 9-11 propaganda. This is a film from 2019, made in the Punjabi dialect, called Kesari (d. Anurag Singh). The movie chronicles the last stand of 21 Sikh soldiers against ten-thousand mujaheddin in the mountains of Afghanistan. This is the sort of picture made with no concern for political correctness -- indeed, made with a certain vehement and nasty bigotry. The picture is refreshing because its hatred is obvious. The mullahs, as they are called in Afghanistan, are vicious, brutal savages -- they put the Apaches in old Westerns to shame with their cunning barbarity. The Sikh soldiers are loveable, kind, generous, heroes to a man. There's no complications of any sort and no attempt to portray events from the perspective of the hordes of villains. (In old Westerns, there's always an obligatory scene showing the Indians being mistreated and abused mercilessly before they go on their rampage. Nothing of this sort impairs the obvious moral calculus of Kesari.) In some ways, the movie is so terrible that it's good --- the Sikh soldiers dance and sing, performing a sort of war-like Punjabi rap and there are plenty of musical numbers on the way to the movie's climactic carnage. The film is without any self-insight at all -- it's all straight-ahead cowboys and Indians (or Sikhs and mullahs) without any glimmer of self-awareness. The critics have been universally scathing in their denunciation of the film (only 31% positive on Rotten Tomatoes). But audiences are enthusiastic -- 88% approval among the popcorn-eating hoi polloi.
The film's production values are excellent. The movie is worth watching just for it's incredibly stark and imposing landscapes. The action takes place on barren, totally treeless ridges with towering snowy summits in the background. Specifically, the movie depicts three identical fortresses, square block-walled bastions that stand at the edge of four-thousand foot deep gorges. The fortresses, manned by brave Sikh warriors (all of them have the last name Singh) communicate by heliograph, mirrors that flash rays of sun in Morse code across the incredibly rugged country. (This was the same way that the cavalry pursuing Geronimo in Arizona communicated with their headquarters.) The hero, Havildar Ishar Singh, is doughty British subject who wears an enormous turban clipped to his head by elliptical bands of metal. Havildar is on patrol at a bleak mountain pass when he sees about 30 mullahs chasing a woman. The Taliban, as it were, intend to behead the woman for not being properly servile to her menfolk. Of course, the Sikhs who believe in women's rights, are appalled and ask leave of their frosty, whey-faced British commander to intervene. They are ordered to stand down: the British don't care about such things as the emancipation of Afghani women. But when the wild-eyed bad guys draw their crescent-shaped blades to behead the girl, the hero reaches up and adjusts his turban, the equivalent of rolling up his sleeves for a fight, and his buddy says: "Oh mercy!" knowing the mayhem that ensues when a good Sikh gets "his Irish up" as they say (or don't and have never said.) Havildar leaps over a breastwork of stones, firing his carbine in slow motion, and, of course, the mullah with the beheading sword drops dead. Then, the hero rushes the bad guys to rescue the girl wielding his carbine like a club to knock down about 20 of the hapless mullahs. When the bad guys overwhelm him and deliver a good beating with poles, the vicious Taliban threaten to yank off Havildar's turban -- "Behead me first!" he cries, "but don't touch my turban." At this desperate juncture, the other Sikhs disobey the British order to retreat and attack the Taliban, slaughtering them all. This doesn't sit well with the Mullahs and they mount an assault in force on the fort -- it's called Fort Lockhart. After about a hundred of the Taliban are gunned down, they retreat. The British commander is enraged and demotes Havildar -- although in a peculiar way, calling him a coward and claiming that India breeds nothing but cowards and, then, saying that he is a "fucker." A standing joke in the movie is that the Sikh are too proud to learn English and, in their language, in fact fahrker means "fierce and proud." Havildar can't figure out why the nasty Brit is complimenting him at the same time that he is busted down to the ranks. For some reason, Havildar is sent to command the Saragarhi Fort, another bastion midway between Lockhart and Guliston. Nothing ever happens there and, when Havildar arrives, the troops are in their underpants betting on a cock fight. Havildar is appalled and punishes the men by making them wrestle (yes, wrestle!) until the roosters tell them to quit. (Another odd punishment.) The roosters crow, singing out "cock-a-doodle-do" which the Sikh's here as "cook us". So the roosters are turned into soup and fricassee. This further enrages the virtuous Havildar who orders that no one is to eat for two weeks, obeying this decree himself in solidarity with his troops. Of course, the soldiers come to love their commander. Meanwhile, the wild-eyed Mullahs have declared a Jihad and are definitely off the reservation. Throughout these proceedings, Havildar is teased by his wife who appears in hallucinations to chide him. (He suggests that she'll get a real spanking when he comes home to his village.) There are some musical number featuring lots of drumming and hopping around in the dust. To show that the Sikh aren't prejudiced, the soldiers repair a local mosque and are rewarded by being given a single almond each by a cute old lady. Havildar pinches the old lady's cheeks and she pinches his cheeks back and, then, they hug in a touching display of ecumenical affection. (The Sikhs have also saved a little boy from being crushed when part of the decaying mosque collapses.) There's lots of joshing among the Sikhs, mostly in a peculiar vein of homosexual horseplay -- the film is totally homophobic, as far as I can see, although the Sikhs seem tempted in that direction and the vicious Mullah sniper is portrayed as brazenly effeminate.
The film's last hour is full of desperate heroics, and laconic warrior aphorisms. This part of the picture is so spectacular and relentless that it is hard to dismiss. There is an aspect of the human spirit that relishes this kind of stuff -- last stands against implacable, wicked enemies -- and Kesari is the ultimate representation of this genre: it incorporates elements from the battle of the Alamo and the great and relentless Zulu directed by Cy Enfield about the Battle of Rorke's Drift. (The film's titles at the end of the movie listing the combatants and their medals of honor is identical to the last sequences in Zulu). Although the battle scenes are ridiculous in a way, they are part of long tradition that originates in Homer's Iliad -- everything is bigger than life; the warriors recess the fighting from time to time to engage in ceremonial exchanges of insults and the action stops, periodically, for declamatory speeches or scenes in which soldiers tend to, and, then, mourn their fallen comrades (most of whom utter pithy and memorable sententiae before breathing their last.). Viewed objectively, the Iliad is full of highly problematic expressions of the warrior ethos -- but it would be difficult to deny the appeal of this sort of thing and Kesari's battle scenes, full of crazed Berserker fury, are undeniably impressive. An enormous army of Pathans besieges the fort on the hill. Havildar calls together his twenty troops and tells them that the British general has ordered them to retreat -- this is a lie, but Havildar wants to make certain that his soldiers are fighting for the proper motives. Politics requires that Sikhs fight not for the "colonial oppressor" but for their "community" of righteous, egalitarian farmers. Thus, the supposed order to retreat must be ignored and the Sikhs must each agree to participate in the desperate defense of the citadel. (The British, in fact, have callously decided the sacrifice the Sikhs in the fort to buy time to reinforce their two other bastions and have ordered them to hold their position.) First, the barbarous Pathans behead the woman who is the cause of these hostilities. This outrages Havildar who shoots the executioner from a distance of about two miles -- "how did the bullet carry so far?" someone asks. "I had the wind at my back," Havildar says impassively. Thousands of Pathans attack but are initially repelled by rifle fire from the fort's ramparts. The Pathans call a parley and their troika of war lords demand that the Sikhs surrender. One of the Mullahs says: "You will lose the battle." Havildar responds: "We won when we decided to fight. The rest is mere bloodshed." This "mere bloodshed" then ensues for an hour with the Sikhs being killed in small groups as the fighting proceeds. There's a desperate defense of the gate -- the Sikhs open the door and there is a rooster standing in the entry; this amazes the Pathans who are then beat back by a charge mounted by about five Sikhs -- they are all riddled with bullets but kill about a hundred of the attackers. Havildar engages in a sniper's duel with the effeminate shooter -- the villain is peppering a wounded Sikh with shots to lure rescuers (the scene is reminiscent of the ending of Full Metal Jacket). Our hero manages to shoot the sniper, blowing up his gun, which fragments so that metal pieces spike his face. Havildar has donned an enormous saffron-colored turban (dastar) which signifies fatalistic courage -- hence, the name of the film. There are all the standard combat tropes: a dying soldier broods about his mother and her garden; one Sikh perishes clutching a note sent to him by his little daughter which she has marked with a painted hand print; a young soldier is unable to shoot an enemy and says that he is afraid -- of course, he will engage in spectacularly courageous and defiant combat at the end of the movie. Havildar conceives of the battle as the last stand of the righteous against the heathens and, further, dedicates the carnage to the one God and his Guru. All men are equal, Havildar proclaims, and he deputizes the one Muslim in the force to carry water to the wounded on both sides since he believes that all injured soldiers are equal and deserve equal compassion when unable to fight. (The poor Muslim, who is like the water-boy Gunga Din, ends up beheaded by his compatriots.) At last, there are just two survivors -- Havildar and the boy who was, at first, afraid. Havildar sticks his sword in a fire so that it is glows red-hot. Then, he engages the Pathan horde in a long battle, killing huge numbers of them before he's cut-down. "Wow!" says one of the mullahs when Havildar has impaled one man on his red-hot sword and is killing about twelve others using the metal clip from his turban -- the turban literally becomes a weapon of war. Although wounded in a dozen places, he's still alive. A noble Muslim orders that his turban not be touched. The boy flees into a tower that the Pathan's set afire. He emerges, entirely sheathed in weird CGI flames, purifying fire, it seems, strolls right into the midst of the Pathans and embraces their leader setting him ablaze and the bomb that he is apparently carrying. The dying Havildar recites a Sikh poem that all are saved who proclaim that God is one. There is a montage of the corpses, some of them spectacularly riddled with swords, and the titles tell us that all 21 Sikhs were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor and that, to this day, the battle is celebrated (remarkably it took place on September 12, 1897) annually -- there are two Guwundar (public meeting places) dedicated to its memory. A nationalistic hymn plays on the soundtrack -- "Saffron is my color," the singer croons.
It's impossible not to admire the audacity and ferocity of the film's climactic battle and there are problematic macho elements buried in the souls of most men that will find this material inspiring -- women, I think, will be left cold by the absurd and, fundamentally, pointless carnage. Some aspects of the final battle are disturbing -- after the Sikhs show how brave, sportsmanlike, and generous they are, they send two prisoners among the Pathan horde who are equipped with suicide bomber vests and blow a huge hole in the Muslim army. (Indeed, there's a sort of predilection for people blowing themselves up.) The British and a large group of Sikhs seem to be observing the battle, but exactly how and where isn't clear. There's a subplot about the Sikhs running out of ammo that is raised and, then, simply abandoned -- dead Sikhs are shown in the end surrounded by hundreds of spent cartridges. And the politics of the battle are problematic -- it's as if the Alamo were fought to preserve slavery in the old South. (And I guess this turns out to be true.) The net effect of the slaughter is that the British who are called "oppressors" in the film, and portrayed as worse than the Muslims, perpetuate their hold over Punjab and India's northwest. Sikhs in Indian media have perfected this material over several iterations, including an epic poem written in 1915 and, at least, two television series as well as other filmed versions. When someone remarked that there seem to be too many shows about this battle, a representative of the Sikh community said that there should be, at least, 21 films since there were 21 heroes and each deserves commemoration. The film is concerned to list the names of the combatants -- the roster of heroes is shown, at least, three times and one of the soldiers writes each name on a wall when the man is killed; this is the kid who is lit on fire at the film's denouement and, of course, he writes his own name on the wall before retreating to the tower where he is immolated. It's easy to remember the last names of each of the warriors -- it is Singh; the word means "lion." This film is like a demented hybrid of John Wayne and Rudyard Kipling and really has to be seen to be believed.
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