‘Dangal’ director Nitesh Tiwari’s latest directorial feature film project ‘Bawaal’ was directly released on the Amazon Prime Video OTT platform last week. Ever since its release, the film was on the receiving end of criticism mainly because a segment of viewers opined that the movie juxtaposed the bitter relationship between the two protagonists (played by Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor) to tragic events from the Second World War and the Holocaust.
After widespread criticism, Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Bawaal’ has now landed in an international controversy. This time from the Jewish human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, and fighting anti-Semitism, amongst other things. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has expressed its disapproval about the way the movie has placed the Auschwitz angle in the story.
(Spoilers Ahead)
For those of you who have already seen ‘Bawaal’ on Prime Video, there is a sequence in the film in which Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor’s characters travel to Europe to visit World War II sites and also visit a gas chamber in Auschwitz, the place which was infamously housed several concentration / extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany. The film’s characters also speak out the lines “We’re all a little like Hitler, aren’t we?” and “Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz”.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who is associated with the aforementioned Jewish human rights organization has expressed his concern about the film and has asked Amazon to stop monetizing ‘Bawaal’ with immediate effect. Moreover, the Rabbi has even described the movie as a “banal trivialisation of the suffering and systematic murder of millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust.”
The Rabbi is not happy with the film’s dialogue “Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz” because he thinks that the film’s director “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.” He further said that “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.”
Amidst the rampant criticism for Prime Video’s romantic drama movie ‘Bawaal’, the main stakeholders – director Nitesh Tiwari along with the movie’s lead actors Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor have been defending the film. But a segment of viewers and people associated with the holocaust are mincing no words to express their discontent and unhappiness about certain scenes shown in ‘Bawaal’. What do you think? Do you think the controversies surrounding ‘Bawaal’ are somewhat exaggerated, or the makers should not have conflated the tragedy in the film’s narrative in an insensitive way?
We’re hiring!
We are hiring two full-time junior to mid-level writers with the option to work remotely. You need to work a 5-hour shift and be available to write. Interested candidates should email their sample articles to [email protected]. Applications without a sample article will not be considered.
