The Silent Heroes review: This real-life story of differently-abled kids makes little impact

[caption id=“attachment_2542216” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A still from The Silent Heroes. Screen grab from Youtube.[/caption] The Silent Heroes wears its self-righteousness on its sleeve or, as it were, on its poster, which reads, “story of 13 real life deaf children on a Himalayan mission.” The operative words here are “real life” and “deaf children”, which are in place to point you towards the fact that it’s an ‘important’ film. The Silent Heroes begins with a title card that tell us, or rather repeats, that the 13 kids acting in the movie, deaf and mute in real life, were especially trained for these roles. Less than 10 minutes into the film, we hear various characters say these, “These kids aren’t disabled; they are differently-abled”; “Kshitj (a differently-abled mountaineer who died in an accident) didn’t want deaf to be seen with pity”, followed by a teacher launching into a quasi-monologue, talking about how these children have no one to play with once the school gets over. Soon, a National Service Scheme instructor, Kapil (Maanuv Bharadwaj), who’s been hired to mentor 13 kids for the Himalayan trek to show that they are no different from able-bodied children, says this to a deaf and mute girl, “Is course ke baad tu bechari nahin sabki pyaari ho jayegi (After this course, you won’t be helpless but loved by everyone).” It’s quite baffling, and simply sad, to note that a film, which talks about the inequities faced by people afflicted with bodily limitations, undermine those very people by repeatedly referring to their disabilities. There’s also a villain here, a hotheaded instructor called Hima (Simran Kaur), who is unnecessarily mean and inordinately insensitive towards these kids, allowing Kapil and his cohorts to repeatedly slip into sanctimonious dialogues. Hima, a strict taskmaster who accompanies the kids on the trek, tries so hard to appear evil (her scenes are underscored by an ominous background score) that she comes across as a buffoon. “Emotions my foot,” she says at one point in the film, when told that she should be empathetic towards these children. “My foot, haha,” she continues, while literally pushing her foot towards the camera. A few scenes later, someone tells her that the kids “are catching fast” — learning how to train quickly. And she comes up with this: “Sirf catching se match nahin jeeta jaata. Uske liye bowling aur batting bhi karni hoti hai (Catches don’t make you win matches. For that you need to learn how to bat and ball as well).” Hima, who continues in this vein throughout the movie, is basically a diabolical version of Deepak Chopra here: Someone who talks a lot but scarcely makes any sense. So we have the following in The Silent Heroes: a comical villain; unconvincing performances; stilted dialogues; a ‘message’, flung at us after every few scenes, to remind us of the makers’ (noble) intentions. You would think that less important things such as a story, logical progression of scenes, or a shred of common sense, would have been nice, too, but sadly, no such luck. It’s sad and ironic to find out that a film that’s essentially trying to champion someone else’s cause can’t save itself in the process.