Very few films leave me confused, and director Laurens C Postma’s The Interview: Night of 26/11 is one of those movies. Although I am still trying to understand this story, I am not sure about the purpose of this film. It is mainly around Rohan (Jackie Shroff), a military journalist forced to interview Tara (Anjum Nayar) on 26/11. The journalist also agrees to do so for the sake of money, but no interviews occur throughout the story.
It is where the confusing part begins. When Rohan arrives at Tara’s house, they try to play alone, tease each other, and maybe even make an effort to build a relationship at some point – but all this with the intention of a little almost forced climax, which he didn’t understand. I believe it would have been easier and probably more fun if the reporter had taken the interview and gone.
Many other things in the film left me confused, including the part where the Editor of Rohan forced him to continue Tara’s conversation while the former kept insisting that he should cover the attack. I wonder which Editor can do that. Some of the talks were highly clever, while others were confusing, but they did not add anything to the already crowded building. The background music was fun and did not add any benefits to all the beauty of the film.
Most of the film is set in a single bungalow, and despite the local limit, DOP Uday Tiwari has experimented heavily with camera angles, which work for the film. As for the play, Jackie Shroff was undercover yet seemingly lost on many points during the narrative. Anjum Nayar’s sincere effort to play this character satisfactorily was evident, though I am unsure how fruitful the action was.
Finally, using ‘Night of the Night 26/11’ in the title of the film seems mandatory. The film was set on 26/11, and it was a military journalist conducting the interview. Other than that, there was nothing else related to the incident in the film. All in all, Dialogue: The night of 26/11 is a passing film.
Movie Review – The Interview: Night of 26/11
The film opens with a reading of the debt, ‘in the memory of Asif Basra.’ The actor plays the role of a photojournalist, a close friend of Jackie Shroff on screen. This mentally entertaining film is one of the last films of the actor who is said to have died by suicide last year. There are few characters in the movie, but his performance is impressive.
The film begins with a tense black and white scene as Jackie Shroff walks through the prison’s corridors, and the inmates scold the other prisoners, asking them to behave themselves and sleep. He then entered a dimly lit room where he appeared to complain about something as if police were questioning him. The film,’Night of the Night 26/11′, then depicts the history of the events that led to his arrest.
Jackie Shroff was assigned to interview an actor in the film. As an award-winning journalist, she has little interest in writing a character who sells lies in her films’. He visits her home and tries many times to get her to talk instead of hitting the mud with her conversation. The pace of the story is very slow, and the conversations are so poorly written that you start to keep up with the times in the hope that the interview will begin at least now.
Even for an hour in the film, the actors talk or ‘play games and play with love. But the famous actor, played by Anjum Nayar, made Jackie slowly open up about his life and his experience as a journalist. As he says in the film, it looks more like the interviewer than the other way around.
The film attempts to unravel the grim reality of the life of a journalist and actor, but the pace of adverse reports and writing kills it. Directed by Laurens C Postma, the film also focuses on feminism, drug and bedrock scams, mental health, cancer, singles issues, alcoholism, and the social and political situation in the country, so much so that it is all socially pervasive. And above all, it tries to be a reminder of the 26/11 attack.
It doesn’t speak directly to it but puts it as the background of a movie. Jackie has been complaining that he wished he had been on the scene and reported on it rather than talking to a woman whose films are ‘stupid dramas.’ He was also made numerous phone calls to his Editor asking him to release him from the assignment and report on the 26/11 attacks. He is surprised when he finds a personal diary, easily placed on a table in an extended living room. He gets detailed information about the character (or at least believes he does).
He thinks it is just an idea to see that any information he has acquired was not about him but about his friend, which is visible to viewers as Anjum releases a few captions throughout the film, ‘Night of the Night 26/11’. However, this veteran journalist did not receive it until it was time to publish. The last scene shows the actor shouting on the balcony as he walks away, revealing a video confessing to a journalist about killing his wife.
Though the story is interesting, it fails to captivate the audience with poor narration, writing, cinematography, dialogues, and low production values. It does not focus on creating a visually pleasing experience for the viewers.
Article Proofread and Edited by Shreedatri Banerjee
