Review: The Waking Of A Nation: Boring!

Ram Madhvani's series is all over the place and also boring to watch, complains Deepa Gahlot.

The words inspired by true events are written and crossed out after the title The Waking Of A Nation. It is as if Ram Madhvani, creator and director of the historical series, has come up with his own theory -- one that never occurred to historians down the ages -- about the terrible Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919.

Then, after six episodes of the show (on SonyLiv), there is nothing new uncovered. Or even the oft-repeated incident retold with any great degree of empathy.

In our country, it is difficult to fudge history, but filmmakers in the West have given their own fictional twists to well-known historical events, with what if? questions raised.

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, comes to mind, with its alternate retelling of history, and two converging plots to assassinate Nazi leaders in Paris.

The Waking Of A Nation is mostly the awakening of one Indian lawyer, Kantilal Sahmi (Taaruk Raina), educated in London, who believed in British justice. After seeing what Amritsar, Punjab and the rest of the country suffered, he changed from trousers to a dhoti and was appointed as one of the three Indians on the Hunter Commission that was appointed to inquire into the events in Punjab.

Sahni mostly paces the courtroom addressing with a deadpan face the crowd instead of members of the commission, waving a notebook with his finger as a bookmark on the same page, which he didn't even refer to.

The show adopts a complicated format of jumping back and forth across timelines, which really adds nothing to the story, already too well known to Indian viewers. General Reginald Dyer (played by Alex Reece) had ordered firing on a peaceful gathering at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, at which 400 people were killed and many more injured.

A blood-stained paper with 'Conspiracy' written across it appears like a motif, as Sahni tries to prove that the massacre was pre-planned. Considering history books name the then Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Michael O'Dwyer (played by Paul McEwan) as responsible for the problems in the state, there is no great revelation.

Madhvani does give some background to the unrest in Punjab, following the stringent Rowlatt Act (that allowed for indiscriminate arrest and detention of freedom fighters, and the arrest of leaders Satyapal and Kitchlew, who had managed to maintain peace in Amritsar against all provocation by the British army.

When violence does break out, and a few British citizens are brutally killed, the authorities stamp down on all protests.

Sahni has a Bollywood-style friendship with a Sikh soldier Hari Singh Aulakh (Bhawsheel Singh Sahni) and a Muslim journalist, Allah Baksh (Sahil Mehta), whose fates open his eyes to British atrocities.

There is an Indian informer Hansraj (Adhyay Bakshi), who seems to be everywhere at once, with his misinformation, and getting the locals to what the British authorities want.

While Amritsar is burning, O'Dwyer is seen an a jungle camp, talking of how to keep savage Indians in check and the 'white man's burden'. (Later, he was assassinated by Udham Singh, while Dyer, the Butcher of Punjab, retired peacefully to his village in the UK.)

In the series, Sahni acts like a detective to expose a conspiracy, which wasn't. History does record that the Jallianwala Massacre caused widespread anger and led to the non-cooperation movement.

Using archival footage as well as making newly shot sequences look like black and white news clips, Madhvani recreates that terrible chapter in Indian history, but the series is all over the place and also, in spite of the dash of the thriller element, boring to watch.

The recent Freedom At Midnight (directed by Nikkhil Advani, also on SonyLiv) was a far more accurate and interesting historical web series.

In The Waking Of A Nation, a few sporadic scenes may stand out -- like Aulakh's wife Poonam participating in the freedom struggle and editing a newspaper, and for its implausibility, the scene in which O'Dwyer comes to Sahni's home and forcibly teaches his father how to use a knife and fork.

It does not, however, come together as a whole either as a historical account, or as a fresh look at the tragedy to unearth unknown facts.

There is no particularly noteworthy performance though the British actors acquit themselves well and do not look like caricature firangiss, even the snooty female medic who would rather die than wear a burqa to escape rioting mobs.

The Waking Of A Nation streams on SonyLiv.