Mainstreaming Hitler is a Bawaal that only Bollywood (and that Beer Biceps guy) can think is cool
At least from its trailer, Bawaal seems to use Hitler and the Holocaust to address an Indian couple's troubled marriage (photo-DailyO)
This July 21, Oppenheimer will not be the only World War II-era film to release. An absurd take on a trouble marriage and the Holocaust is also set to release on Prime Video on the same day.
The Holocaust and Adolf Hitler are always tricky topics to touch upon, especially if you joke on it even for a moment. On the one hand, we have a sensitive but depressing epic like Schindler’s List and then the tearjerking comedy Life is Beautiful (which despite winning plenty of Oscars has mostly received negative backlash from Jews themselves).
Fast forward to the 21st century and Holocaust is still a touchy topic. Yes, Israel is itself being blamed for pro-Zionist elements taking over Palestinians, but in the West, antisemitism still looms large (*coughs* Kanye West).
Now, the latest trailer for the Varun Dhawan and Jhaanvi Kapoor-led Bawaal is not antisemitic (at least it doesn’t intend to) but it seems to tread on a slippery slope with dialogues like “We’re all a bit like Hitler” and “The World War is over but no one knows when the war we fight within will end”.
The Holocaust, the chilling World War II tragedy in which Nazis were responsible for the decimation of millions of Jews, is reduced to a metaphor for a Kanpur couple’s ups and downs. The overstuffed 3-minute-long trailer introduced Varun Dhawan as a bratty local leader in Kanpur who vows to woo Jahnvi Kapoor’s character.
One Kanpur cliche after the other, the newly-married couple somehow end up on a cross-country Europe trip with the intention of exploring historic World War II-era sites.
After a sojourn in France, the couple head to Germany where they seem to revisit the Holocaust and Nazi authoritanianism with black-and-white flashbacks of the era. In some scenes, Varun and Jahnvi can be seen getting separated as the Nazi guards lock them up in gas chambers (with hordes of captive Jews giving them company).
While India harbours only a minority Jew population, one can only wonder what reactions this Prime Video original would generate when streamed by Jewish populations from all over the world. The aforementioned dialogues end up trivialising the Jewish oppression further even if that wouldn’t be the intention of director Nitesh Tiwari (Dangal, Chhichore).
Examining the exhibits of a Holocaust museum, Jahnnvi Kapoor remarks that there’s a Hitler in all of us because we are all driven by greed and “we want what others have”. Well, that’s quite an absurd way to refer to the Austria-born Hitler grabbing power in Germany and subsequently invading Poland and France. While his territorial annexation was driven by goals to strengthen his own militaristic power, Hitler was always eager to exercise his dictatorship to implement his own ideological Utopia, a land based on ethnic cleansing of the Jews, blacks, people with disabilities and so on. Nazi Germany was not just driven by “greed” like imperialist Britain or capitalist America!
Even if we don’t overanalyse this particular line from Bawaal, the quote (if taken out of context) can be used by neo-Nazis for all we care!
Just a few months ago, controversial podcaster Beer Biceps (the alter ego of Ranveer Allahbadia) remarked that “Hitler was evil, but who isn’t” in a controversial video titled Career Hack Used By Hitler To Become The World’s Greatest Leader. The video got taken down later amid much trolling and backlash.
Despite a large majority of Germans being ashamed of Hitler and the Third Reich, there are substantial far-right groups who subscribe to the same hate-driven ideas of antisemitism. 2022 bore witness to an attempted coup at the German parliament with the protesters all attached to antisemtic groups who desire to replace the current government with a monarchist rule or “Reich” as the Germans call it.
It’s also public knowledge at this point that many Donald Trump supporters in the US identify as neo-Nazis. This May, Nazi slogans were also played over a public accouncement system in an Austrian train for 20 minutes in what can be described as a darkly ironic throwback to the country’s Nazi past.
Throughout the trailer of Bawaal, Dhawan’s hero seems to emphasise how a World War of hate and anger brews inside all of us. When they land in Berlin, he remarks that the “war starts now”, following a montage of the couple’s ugly clashes. The wife remarks the husband is selfish. The husband adds that she’s a “defected piece”. And then, the audiences are randomly transported to Nazi Germany with glimpses of genocide.
The trailer leaves you with a plenty of questions but ultimately leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
The poster reads, “Every love story has its own war”. What exactly is Nitesh Tiwari setting out to achieve with Bawaal? Is he adding a Nazi spin to Shaadi Ke Side Effects? Is he reducing the entire World War into a marital scuffle? Or is he just trying to incorporate some edgy humour by name-dropping Hitler?
Maybe, when the movie finally drops on July 21, some of the trailer’s absurdities will make more sense. But till then, here’s hoping that Bawaal doesn’t create an actual “bawaal” among the Jews of the world!