Tag: bawaal

  • Jewish group demands Prime remove ‘Bawaal’ over insensitive portrayal of Holocaust

    Jewish group demands Prime remove ‘Bawaal’ over insensitive portrayal of Holocaust

    The Bollywood film ‘Bawal’ has been slammed on social media for using the trauma of the Holocaust ss the backdrop of a domestic spat between a couple. Starring Jhanwi Kapoor and Varun Dhavan, the film revolves around a couple who travel around Europe to visit places central to World War II.

    The film had been met with intense scrutiny, with many calling out the film makers because of several dialogues. “Every couple goes through their Auschwitz” and “We all too are a little like Hitler, aren’t we? We aren’t satisfied with what we have. We want what others have,” are two of the objectionable lines in the film.

    READ MORE: Bawaal’s cringey comparison of Holocaust with relationships will give you second-hand embarrassment

    The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), which preserves the history of the victims of the Holocaust, has now issued a public statement where they called for the streaming giant Amazon Prime to remove the film from its service for “outlandish abuse of the Nazi Holocaust as a plot device”.

    “Auschwitz is not a metaphor. It is the quintessential example of Man’s capacity for Evil,” spoke SWC Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action, Rabbi Abraham Cooper.

    By having the protagonist in this movie declare that ‘Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz,’ Nitesh Tiwari, trivializes and demeans the memory of 6 million murdered Jews and millions of others who suffered at the hands of Hitler’s genocidal regime.

    If the filmmaker’s goal was to gain PR for their movie by reportedly filming a fantasy sequence at the Nazi death camp, he has succeeded. Amazon Prime should stop monetizing Bawaal by immediately removing this banal trivialization of the suffering and systematic murder of millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust,” Rabbi Cooper concluded. 

  • Bawaal’s cringey comparison of Holocaust with relationships will give you second-hand embarrassment

    Bawaal’s cringey comparison of Holocaust with relationships will give you second-hand embarrassment

    After romanticizing predators and promoting Islamophobia, Bollywood thinks mirroring a toxic relationship with the traumas of the 1945 Nazi reign in Germany is what we have been missing all along.

    Starring Varun Dhawan and Jhanvi Kapoor, the film ‘Bawaal’ explores the troubles of a married couple who decide to visit all of the places in Europe that were deemed important to World War II, deciding that the battlefield would be the perfect backdrop to mirror the traumas of two elite people.

    A scene going viral on Twitter features Jhanvi’s character saying: ‘Every relationship goes through their own Auschwitz”.

    Twitter users slammed director Nitesh Tiwari for reducing a horrifying historical event to domestic spats.

    “Did they go to school or bother to watch any historical documentary?” one user wrote.

    Another clip from the film sees the couple discussing Hitler, with Jhanvi saying:

    “We all too are a little like Hitler, aren’t we? We aren’t satisfied with what we have. We want what others have.”

    Thee trailer for the film, released two weeks ago, featured a scene where Varun Dhavan looks at Hitler’s image and in the backdrop Jhanvi is saying “We’re all a bit like Hitler.”

    Responding to the accusations of ‘tone-deaf’ and ‘insensitive portrayal of a tragedy’, Tiwari spoke to The Hindustan Times about it.

    “While creating a character, you can go back and look at the events and incidents which can play an important role in the overall arc of that character and the relationship in general. It’s not just about Hitler. There are many more things that you may not have seen in the trailer. Every incident has been very carefully chosen that can have an impact on the overall arc.”

    Bawaal has been panned by critics with The Guardian giving it one star and saying it lacked in “fun, pep, humour and charm”. The Hindustan Times called it “the most insensitive film of the year.”