Kesari Chapter 2 Is Not Just Another  Historical, It Is A Masterpiece

All I remember of Kesari in 2019 is Akshay Kumar’s fake flowing white beard.

There is nothing fake about Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story Of Jallianwala Bagh, although there are lots of white people in the cast (genuine ones, not fake goras except for Luke Kenny who does a hilarious takeoff on a Caucasian solicitor) and yes, plenty of beards too, none false. You could tug Madhavan’s facial hair to verify.

Madhavan plays Neville McKinley, a wily compromised boozy lawyer who defends the indefensible General Dyer (Simon Paisley Day, excellent) who massacred hundreds if not thousands in Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April 1919.

Now, 106 years later, debutant director Karan Singh Tyagi revisits the carnage with so much compassion that it feels like yesterday once more. In the way he handles the characters, even the smaller ones and in the way he fictionalizes the original tragedy without tampering with its essential gravity, Tyagi proves himself a master storyteller.

And this is only his first film! What a spectacular start!! Kesari Chapter 2 walks talks and feels like an epic. Like all true epics, it doesn’t strive to be one. Tyagi focuses on telling the often told story of Dyer’s demonical deed with minimum fuss and optimum impunity. There is a certain sassiness, audacity if you will, in a brown-skinned lawyer taking on the British empire.

The writer-director saves the claps for the martyrs, the victims of an unspeakable unforgivable outrage that occurred when we were not looking. Bringing it back with such a forceful impact couldn’t be easy. Akshay Kumar as the intrepid Sankaran Nair sadly looks nothing like a Keralite (the belated effort to get into a mundu notwithstanding). Whatever he lacks in external prep he makes up for with his sincerity.

Regina Cassandra as his wife is well clothed for her role but seems to succumb to the sins of sketchiness. She is listless. Ananya Pandey as Sankaran’s assistant in court is surprisingly credible. Her role too is underwritten. But she succeeds in making an impact in her limited space.

In one media interactive sequence, when a cocky journalist wonders how a woman can be in the courtroom (this is Colonial India), Ananya’s Dilreet Gill retorts, “Don’t you have queens in England?

Coincidentally, another favourite lighthearted moment in the taut narration features Ms Panday, when her prospective husband wonders how his mother would deal with a lawyer bahu.

For once Akshay is not in every frame. In fact, there is one lengthy courtroom interrogation of an eyewitness where his female assistant takes over while Akshay, for once, just watches.

This is not a film about celebrating a hero. Kesari 2 celebrates the lives of those hundreds of martyrs who perished in Jallianwala Bagh. When their names started scrolling in the end titles, I had tears in my eyes. Every country-loving Indian would feel the same way.

Without aggressive jingoism and unnecessary flag-waving, this film hits where it hurts the most. Amidst, the noisy violence of the senseless Jaats and Sikandars, Kesari Chapter 2 reminds us of the renewable relevance of the powerful dominating the weak. Even as we applaud the vision of the racy interpretation of history’s mysteries in Kesari Chapter 2, Chapter 3 unfolds in Ukraine.