Mayank Shekhar मयंक शेखर@mayankw14
The same dastardly event, i.e. the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, 1919, has been dramatised in different ways in films, from Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) to Shoojit Sircar’s Sardar Udham (2021).
While the latter recreates the genocide, in a bloodily detailed, long-drawn sort of way, Ram Madhvani’s series The Waking of a Nation (2025) deliberately avoids the explicit visuals altogether.
And that tells you all about the tone of a film/series, right away. As with Kesari Chapter 2, similarly centred on the said episode.
Wherein, upon the firing-orders of General Reginald Dyer (Simon Paisley Day), the first bullet, almost sized like a torpedo, goes off in slow motion, hitting its target, in the packed Amritsar park.
Merciless mayhem follows, while you find a li’l boy you’ve just made onscreen acquaintance with, screaming under a heap of dead bodies, that his hand struggles through, to wave out in the air.
Kesari Chapter 2 is a mainstream, emotional, historical drama. Which is inevitably the most effective way for a film/story to travel to widest audiences.
That said, there’s nothing seemingly hysterical about it. Not a moment that you’ll cringe. It’s more likely to draw critical acclaim. This is rare.
Such is the power-packed, uncluttered, uncomplicated storytelling—building scene over scene, twists over turns, and performances to top the other.
Already, there’s something ironic about this film titled as an official sequel to Anurag Singh’s Kesari (2019)—why’s that?
Review link in bio👇🏽Kesari Chapter 2: ‘Truly, zubaan kesari!’
