'Freedom At Midnight' web series review: Nikkhil Advani's slow-burn political drama oscillates between tense and terse

Cast: Chirag Vohra, Siddhant Gupta, Ira Dubey, Arif Zakaria, Rajesh Kumar

Director: Nikkhil Advani

Language: Hindi

Nikkhil Advani knows a thing or two about scale and grandeur. For someone who has been so closely associated with Karan Johar has to know or maybe ought to know how to create moments of sweep and sway the viewers with the spectacle on display. He did that right with his directorial debut Kal Ho Naa Ho that’s re-releasing in cinemas today. 21 years later, he has carved a new territory where sweep is combined with slow-burn. His last directorial Vedaa was steeped in grotesque violence and gruesome visuals. In that regards, Freedom At Midnight, even after dealing with an issue as barbaric and broad as partition, feels like a breather.

Advani chooses actors over stars for his new web-series. Chirag Vohra, Siddhant Gupta, Ira Dubey, Arif Zakaria, Rajesh Kumar headline the show now streaming on Sony LIV. The first shot itself speaks of the cinematic experience Advani has gained in his many years of working. Father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi makes a slow-motion appearance as rains lash the city. There are too many questions with very little answers. And when you have an issue like partition, the number of questions will always overpower the number of answers. For anyone, the only question that matters is- Why did it all happen? And the second most crucial one- How did it all happen?

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As much as the filmmaker should be lauded for stepping away from the world of big stars, the ensemble he has created for his show are both hit and miss. Rajendra Chawla in particular as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel plays to the gallery at times, and it’s hard to tell if it was intentional to diffuse the tension built in the narrative or these were actual conversations he had with Jawaharlal Nehru. This towering figure is played by Siddhant Gupta. In Vikramaditya Motwane’s tenacious Jubilee, this actor had the most intriguing character arc. He went from being a theatre actor to a refugee to a director, but what he retained in his performance was the restlessness.

Gupta brings the same restlessness into this performance and rightly so. Nehru and his war of words with Mohammad Ali Jinnah have the intensity the rest of the show perhaps needed. And Arif Zakaria is aptly cast as the debatable figure. There’s some charisma he exudes as takes on this complex role. He also gets the best line of the show- To make an omelette, you have to break some eggs. But the one false note I felt was the performance of Chirag Vohra as Gandhi. Maybe a more refined and seasoned performer could have lent more pathos into this iconic figure’s psyche and physicality.

And in the first two episodes, he appears and disappears and appears again. But to his credit, he gets the Gujarati twang correct. Advani has announced there would be a season two. A topic like partition cannot be covered in just one web series so the conflicts have not culminated yet, so it’s like only watching the first half which lasts for about 240 minutes. What next? Time to wait and watch, but for now, Freedom At Midnight oscillated between tense and terse. Still a better option that those pretentious films on OTT that have the audacity to celebrate their successes.

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

Freedom At Midnight is now streaming on Sony LIV