‘Bheed’ movie review: Anubhav Sinha’s cry for social justice needs to be heard

Powered by persuasive performances by Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Kapur, and Aditya Srivastava, Bheed, directed by Anubhav Sinha, addresses the spectre of caste and class divide in the times of COVID

While covering the mass migration of workers from cities to villages during the early days of the COVID pandemic, one realised who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from. When borders were drawn within the country, the virus also exposed our weak social immunity spilled in the form of  bheed on national highways and railway tracks.

This week, director Anubhav Sinha has kneaded the infection of novel coronavirus with insidious social discrimination to craft a compelling statement that stands out in the crowd of films made during the pandemic.

Deeply political in its thought, provocative in its composition, and humane in its gaze,  Bheed shows us the mirror that we took off our walls once the pandemic receded into the background.

Set at a junction on the State border, it is an account of a caravan of migrants of different social hues who are stopped by a police officer who is dealing with another virus that is prevailing for centuries in society. The writers (Sinha, Saumya Tiwari, and Sonali Jain) tie up the diverse snapshots of people caught in the unprecedented situation fairly well.

It is the Incisive dialogues that propel the story. When the protagonist says, “we could not make arrangements for them (migrant workers) when they were in the villages, we could not take care of them when they were in the cities and now we could not take care of them when they are back,” it sums up the situation for things haven’t changed back home. Shot in black and white, early in the film, we watch the stark image of a severely injured person who is beaten up because he dared to drink water from a place of worship during the pandemic.

Also Read: Anubhav Sinha on ‘Bheed’, Bhushan Kumar, and changes to trailer

As someone who addressed the caste matrix well in  Article 15, Sinha once again cries for social justice without romanticising it. The film states that the market has systematically turned migrant workers into cheap labour and that they would return at the first opportunity. If  Article 15 was from the gaze of a high-caste police officer finding his feet in a difficult situation; the companion piece is from the point of view of a lower-rung officer, caught between his social identity and an unprecedented state of affairs.