AMAZON PRIME VIDEO Aug 01, 2023 at 12:49 p.m
Nobody needs to be told that Hitler and the Second World War are a sensitive topic, right? The Bollywood director of “Bawaal” maybe!
Bawaal: The Indian film starring Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor creates an uproar over inappropriate Hitler comparisons. (Source: Amazon Prime Video / TMDb.org) A Bollywood film was released on Amazon Prime Video that caused displeasure. In the film “Bawaal” the Holocaust is used as a metaphor for a love story. “Bawaal” means something like “excitement” in German. The title says it all!
The Bollywood film “Bawaal” has started on Amazon Prime Video. It is a romantic comedy with dancing and singing – and Hitler comparisons! Something doesn’t go together, many people think, and the film actually causes resentment on the Internet. Parallels between romantic relationships and the Holocaust were already drawn in the trailer.
“Every love story goes through its own Auschwitz” serves as a metaphor for ups and downs in a relationship. A harsh comparison that even ensured that the politically active and international Jewish organization Simon Wiesenthal Center asked Amazon to immediately delete the film from the streaming program!
Bollywood downplays Hitler: How can a film like this still be made today?
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The film revolves around a young Indian couple who travel to Europe to visit “Hitler’s City”. That’s what Auschwitz is called. We see numerous flashbacks to WWII cut between relationship scenes. A crude comparison, but where is the film headed?
Protagonist Ajay, portrayed by Varun Dhawan (“Dilwale”), is a history teacher and narcissist. His wife, Nisha (Janhvi Kapoor: “Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl”) suffers from epilepsy and accompanies him on his trip. She is described as being more intelligent than him, at least in the summaries.
Without having seen the film, it’s difficult to judge whether the comparisons only seem so harsh in the trailer or also in the film itself. The trailer caused the most outrage and it seems as if very few critics have actually seen the film. It is clear that it is a very sensitive topic that should not be incorporated into films lightly.
The comparisons drawn in the trailer seem trivializing and even if it is most likely that a narcissistic and probably unreflected teacher is rethinking his own views and the flashbacks to the Second World War are used for this purpose, from a Western perspective it does not seem to make sense to incorporate the Second World War to be topic.
The title “Bawaal”
Loosely translated into German, “Bawaal” means something like “excitement”. This of course fits the controversy and also the topic of the film. Another translation would be “cinnabar”. This is a mineral that is red. In Hinduism, a crimson cosmetic powder is used to mark the status of a married woman.
The film got a very bad review on the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ portal, and the respected Indian film critic Anupama Chopra also sharply criticized the film for playing down the Second World War.
Accordingly, it does not appear to be an outrage unique to Western society. The viewer ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and also the IMDb ratings are quite good. How can this be explained?
We in the West have a very colonial perspective on certain things. In other parts of the world certain subjects are taught less intensively in schools, playing smaller roles in their lives. Just as we here know very little about the India-Pakistan wars or the situation in Kashmir.
This is by no means intended to justify the inappropriate comparisons in “Bawaal”, but only to point out that in the West, unthinking things about other cultures also regularly find their way into pop culture that we don’t even notice ourselves.
If you want to get an idea of ”Bawaal” for yourself, it’s not that easy in Germany. Although it is an Amazon Prime Original, the streaming service does not release all the films to which it has the rights in Germany. Why this is so is unclear. Numerous Bollywood films are therefore not available in Germany, which is a pity!
However, using a VPN service like Cyberghost makes it easy to watch the film. With a VPN you can bypass the country block and access the US Amazon Prime Video!
With the subscription now 82 percent cheaper*
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2023-08-01 15:04:37
#Blatant #Hitler #trivialization #Amazon #Prime #film #outrage
