Operation Safed Sagar review: How much courage is required to strap yourself into a lean mean machine and take off into the air, flying at supersonic speeds, zero-ing in on a target with snap-shot judgement which will make the difference between life and death, defeat and victory?
The best war films deliver those moments, where the viewer and the man in the hot seat are breathing together, in their attempt to seek and find and destroy: the handsomely-mounted, solidly-executed Operation Safed Sagar gives us all of the above — combat pilots risking their lives with a smile, families living with bated breath and eternal optimism, and the men on the ground taking those tough calls, win or lose.
The series with its six 45-55 minutes episodes, directed by Oni Sen, with Sandeep Jain, Nikhil Ravi, Barun Kashyap, Abhijeet Singh Parmar sharing story and screenplay credits, is easily amongst the best battle accounts that I’ve seen recently. It’s not just the men and their machines; it’s not just the swagger that goes with the territory — those have been part of the game ever since Tom Cruise top-gunned his way down the tarmac, leaving other actors dying to don those cool aviators and loop the loops.
Here, of course we get the gravity-defying sorties conducted by dashing young pilots, watched over by their seasoned seniors. And of course, there are the men standing in front of white boards and maps exchanging grim notes and news. These we have seen before.
What gives the show its emotional heft is that we also see them as humans with their aches and pains, strengths and vulnerabilities: the characters feel lived-in, like they’ve stayed in those quarters and shared the same mess, and merrily ‘bounced’ at their senior officers’ homes (a bonding ritual familiar to air force families, which invite the marauding bachelors into their house, plying them with food and drink, turning the whole thing into a party).
Siddharth plays Flight Commander Ajay Ahuja, the guy who knows all the tricks in the book, and then some. He is called in to shape the callow Golden Arrows into being their most effective selves, centimetre by agonising centimetre. The summon comes via their superior (Jimmy Shergill), and the hard training comes in good stead when war breaks out, and the derring-do Arrows take to the skies to make the peaks safe again.
The operation is termed as a ‘little-known’ aspect of the 1999 Kargil conflict. Most of the earlier films made on the subject revolved around the army and its troops inching their way up the treacherous, snow-filled peaks of the Drass and Kargil sector, being picked off by the Pakistani infiltrators who had moved in, taking advantage of the lull caused by the Lahore declaration, an outcome of then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s decision to take a bus to the neighbouring country on a shanti yatra.
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The intention was noble, but was foiled by the machinations of General Parvez Musharraf, who took that opportunity to install his soldiers masquerading as mujahideens on the Indian side of the peaks, despite the Pak premier Nawaz Sharif’s (Vinay Pathak) best efforts to keep things on track.
There’s a degree of nuance in these details which provide depth, even if some portions feel constructed: I’m sure creative liberties must have been used to create the light-hearted moments when the pilots and their wives swing to a particular Bollywood chartbuster. But it never feels like a stretch: the high-spirited boys on the dance-floor, jiving with their senior officers and their wives is another forces tradition.
But, and this crucial, there’s no attempt at retrofitting uncomfortable state actions; the insertion of real-life TV news clips is merely there to buttress the happenings in the show. It never gives Pakistan an out, and even as it reveals Sharif’s increasingly weakened hold on power, as well as the ghastly torture wrought upon a captured Indian pilot in a camp run by a Musharraf loyalist (Danish Hussain) with a noble streak, the series doesn’t descend into name-calling, or bigotry.
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The near-naive Sharif’s desire to be seen as the man who was on board with Vajpayee’s attempts to mend the frayed ties between the two nations is of a piece with how history has judged him. Even Musharraf’s (Manu Rishi Chaddha in a career best performance, scarily and persuasively spot on) villainy is never turned into an exaggeration: he is who he is, and he will do anything to grab Kashmir, even if it goes against the Geneva convention. But the show’s forays into the American and Chinese territories border on the laughable, making those men into near-clowns, with accented actors playing dress-up.
But Operation Safed Sagar makes none of these mistakes when it comes to the Indian faujis: all of them look as if they have earned their stripes, whether it is Sidhharth and Shergill, or the young uns’ (Abhay Varma, Mihir Ahuja, Taaruk Varma, Arnav Bhasin, each with their quirk), or the other uniformed men who show up briefly (Sanjay Suri, Barun Sobti), or the top honcho (Adil Hussain). Yes, it does turn into an explainer (first we will do this, and then do this) in more than one place. Yes, there’s dialoguing, rather than speaking, but we will make those allowances for men used to giving and taking explicit orders. And yes, there are the aerial dog fights which while remaining consistently thrilling, can’t escape their clear CGI origins.
But none of these are deal-breakers. Sidharth, the leader who leads from the front, is wonderful (and of course we’ve never forgotten him in ‘Rang De Basanti’, that twenty year-old film, also featuring falling planes and idealistic youngsters, which has suddenly found a fresh fan following). Can he please not disappear again; he’s left a lump in my throat which I wouldn’t like to dislodge in a hurry. Shergill is as reliable as ever, as are the others. The ladies — Amrita Bagchi, Dia Mirza, Prajakta Koli — don’t have much to do but pine and wait, but don’t fare too badly. Especially the former, who personifies the sorrow of a ‘forces spouse’ left with her memories.
The 1999 Kargil conflict led to several cinematic re-creations, like Lakshya, LOC Kargil, Gunjan Saxena, Shershah. Each of those films kept their focus, rightly, on the bravery of the Indian army, fighting a crafty enemy at an impossible altitude. What Operation Safed Sagar does is to go above and beyond, literally: it takes to the skies, showing us the Indian Air Force which pulled off a near-impossible feat, of striking from beyond the clouds through nerdy jugaad.
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A rousing, moving tribute to our armed forces, Operation Safed Sagar is drama minus melodrama, toplining patriotism not jingoism. It made my eyes well up, and chest swell with pride, a perfect Independence Day watch.
Operation Safed Sagar cast: Siddharth, Jimmy Shergill, Vinay Pathak, Manu Rishi Chaddha, Anjan Srivastava, Dia Mirza, Amrita Bagchi, Adil Hussain, Abhay Verma, Mihir Ahuja, Taaruk Raina, Prajakta Koli, Arnav Bhasin, Danish Hussain, S M Zaheer
Operation Safed Sagar director: Oni Sen
Operation Safed Sagar rating: 3.5 stars
