Freedom at Midnight

Once a purveyor of Bollywood entertainment, director Nikkhil Advani of late is exploring drama surrounding real, epochal events – life-altering situations where the decisions are not made based on right and wrong, but on the pretext of consequences. A slippery ground to navigate, he got it right in Mumbai Diaries set against 26/11 terror attacks in the metropolis and doesn’t disappoint in Freedom At Midnight either.

One of the most painful and fraught chapters of India’s history is brought to life in the SonyLIV series Freedom at Midnight, created by Nikkhil Advani. With a large ensemble cast of Indian and foreign actors, the series moves forwards and backwards in time to depict what went through the minds of India’s political leaders as they bargained and argued with the British empire for their freedom. Through the seven episodes, the threat of partition looms large, and the tense finale brings with it a melancholic feeling that lingers.

After years of struggle, the idea of an independent India doesn’t seem a distant dream. The British looks ready to hand over the reins to the country by 1946, but at what cost? Nehru is at odds with Gandhi’s ideals and the interests of the Congress party, while Patel prefers to be the bad cop. A bitter and ailing Jinnah is desperate for the formation of Pakistan. Who has the last laugh?

It’s 1946, Partition is starting to look like a real possibility, and the Congress High Command isn’t a happy place. The visiting Akali leaders are militant, Nehru is getting worked up, and Patel’s biscuit, which he isn’t paying attention to, is getting soggy. At the exact moment Nehru asks the Akalis what they want, half of it disintegrates and falls into the tea. The next shot is Jinnah in his garden, snipping a rose stem.

With Freedom at Midnight, Nikhil Advani continues looking at big cultural moments through the microscopic gaze of an insider. Across the two seasons of his breakout show Mumbai Diaries, the filmmaker portrayed pressing social crises through the labour of medical practitioners attending to the casualties. This shift in slant sidestepped the showiness prone to cinematic excess and allowed for a more intimate rendering of public events, transforming, therefore, the narrative around them. In his latest long-form work, Advani turns his gaze to the wide spectrum of India’s independence and reiterates his style of focusing on the bureaucratic bottleneck, telling the story therefore of the people living inside towering buildings and not on the street. Freedom at Midnight is about the historicity of 1947 conveyed through the lives of those who curated the history.

The choice of using ‘Freedom At Midnight’, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s account of the tumultuous build-up to India’s independence in August 1947, as the basis for the seven-part web series of the same name achieves one thing above all else: adapting from source material which has been in existence for several years, especially from the celebrity author duo who couldn’t be accused of being either pro-India, or pro-Pakistan, frees creator and director Nikkhil Advani of being accused similar bias.

सालों लंबी क्रांति और अनगिनत शहीदों की कुर्बानी के बाद अंग्रेजी हुकूमत से 1947 में मिली आजादी के बदले हिंदुस्तान के दिल पर विभाजन का जो जख्म लगा, वह टीस 77 साल बाद आज भी महसूस होती है। मगर क्या धर्म के नाम पर हुआ देश का यह बंटवारा जरूरी था? क्या यह रुक सकता था? देश के भविष्य से जुड़े इस निर्णायक फैसले में शामिल पंडित नेहरू, महात्मा गांधी, सरदार पटेल या मोहम्मद अली जिन्ना जैसे राजनेताओं का क्या रुख रहा? इतिहास के सबसे त्रासद बंटवारे को लेकर ऐसे ही कई अनछ़ुए पन्ने पलटती है, निखिल अडवानी की वेब सीरीज ‘फ्रीडम एट मिडनाइट’। यह सीरीज लैरी कॉलिन्स और डॉमनिक लैपियर की इसी नाम से लिखी बहुचर्चित किताब पर आधारित है, जो ब्रिटिश राज का सूरज ढलने के बाद एक स्वतंत्र हिंदुस्तान के बनने के दौरान हुई राजनीति और सामाजिक हालातों की गहराई से पड़ताल करती है।

We, the post-Independence generation, have grown up listening to or reading this historic speech by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. But what about the goings-on before that momentous moment of freedom? What led to India breathing free? What made the British leave behind a nation divided into two? Why Nehru, and not Sardar Patel, was chosen to lead India? Why did Mohammad Ali Jinnah, initially a Congressman, turn so bitter as to demand a separate nation for his Muslim brethren? We might know the answers to these in bits and parts, but, as Nikkhil Advani, creator of the immensely watchable and impeccable ‘Rocket Boys’, turns his creative eye to the run-up to India’s tryst with destiny, he creates yet another masterpiece, offering perspective and detail.