Punjab 1984 Review

Punjab 1984 is an emotional story of a Mother’s never ending wait for her son. The movie starts when Satwant Kaur has been searching for her son Shivjeet Singh for a year.
A land dispute resulted in the arrest of protagonist Shivjeet aka Shiva. After escaping from the fake encounter setup, Shiva takes up arms to fight for justice. Moving on, the movie shows some hungry for power Sikh leaders using youngsters like Shiva for political gains. The dispute between Shiva and Rana (Police Officer who arrests Diljit filing a fake case) runs throughout the movie as well. As a viewer, I was waiting to see whether or not Shiva will be united with his mother and it remains a mystery till the end. I won’t disclose what happens in the end but the ending is likely to burst you into tears. All the characters are nicely portrayed by the actors aided by nice music and direction. The way the whole story has been shown is worth praising. But despite being an excellent movie what has made Punjab 1984 controversial and hated by so many Sikhs around the world?

Punjab 1984 Controversy

There are two main reasons that have led to the hatred of movie by the people which areInappropriate Title and Wrong Facts about 1984. No doubt it is an excellent movie showing an endless wait of a mother for her son and is dedicated to all the Mothers still waiting for their son to return. It can be seen as a story of a Sikh boy who had to face the consequences of 1984 without being responsible for anything at all but the movie never covers the reality of 1984. So, title of the movie is not appropriate and was sure to draw criticism for misleading the audience. Another fault with the movie is the wrong interpretation of the Khalistan movement. The movie shows people taking up arms only when something wrong happens to them and also shows killing of innocent Hindus by Sikhs. The reality is that no Sikh was directly or indirectly responsible for killing innocent Hindus. Khalistan movement mainly constituted of the Sikhs taking up arms to fight against injustice and discrimination done towards Sikhs, to help the innocent and to punish the culprits. Most of them took on arms to stand for right and not because something bad happened to them. Sikhs killing Hindus was a hoax created to spread hatred against these justice seeking groups. So, a movie named Punjab 1984 never depicted what actually happened in Punjab during and after 1984. The movie would have been flawless if the story didn’t try to dig deeper into the Khalistan movement which was definitely possible as the main plot is completely different. Along with that, choosing a different title would have spared the movie all the criticism. A good move from the creators of this movie could be renaming the movie when the DVDs come out or when the movie is played on TV Channels.

Conclusion

It’s a nice movie that can be seen as a story of an individual during 1984 or as the suffering of a Mother for her son but not as what exactly happened in Punjab during 1984. Overall, a great movie and it is good to see Punjabi cinema finally making some sensible movies beside just comedy. In the end, Punjab 1984 is a nice movie and I’ll recommend watching it.