The Silent Heroes: Good intentions are not enough for good cinema

The children might be the real heroes but the filmmaker lets them down.

The Silent Heroes (Hindi)

Director: Mahesh Bhatt

Cast: Maanuv Bharadwaj, Priyanka Panchal, Mann Bagga, Simran Deep, Nirmal Kumar Pant

First thing first. The director is not to be confused with the Mahesh Bhatt. The man behind The Silent Heroes is a newbie.

Also, my appreciation of the film or the lack of it rides on the way the makers have been milking the fact that its child actors are hearing and speech impaired and that they shot in tough conditions in the Himalayas. The children might be the real heroes but the filmmaker lets them down. Despite the effort put in by them you get a film that doesn’t make you feel for them or their endeavour. The self-righteous posturing doesn’t cut deep and shows that good intentions alone can’t be enough to make good cinema.

You have to make an involving film than a melodramatic mess like The Silent Heroes in which everyone is trying too hard to act or to appear cool. There are overcooked emotions but too little edge of the seat thrills in the adventure segments.

A Sonu Nigam song here, some filtered, instagrammed shots of the mountains there and in between a tale about a dead deaf and mute mountaineering instructor, his girlfriend and friend and their dream of sending special kids on a mountaineering expedition.

Poor kids are saddled with doing things for faqr (pride) and to prove things to the world than for the sheer joy of it. In the midst of all this the one who stands out is a dreadful teacher called Hina Ma’am who shouts “emotions my foot” and then actually kicks her leg in the air. We couldn’t help but laugh.