Freedom At Midnight Review: A Poignant Reminder That Freedom Came At A Cost

Freedom At Midnight Cast/Actors: Sidhant Gupta as Jawaharlal Nehru, Chirag Vohra as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Rajendra Chawla as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Luke McGibney as Lord Louis Mountbatten, Cordelia Bugeja as Edwina Mountbatten, Arif Zakaria as Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Ira Dubey as Fatima Jinnah, Malishka Mendonsa as Sarojini Naidu, K.C. Shankar as VP Menon, Rajesh Kumar as Liaquat Ali Khan, Anuvab Pal as Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy

Freedom At Midnight Director: Nikkhil Advani

Freedom At Midnight Release Date: 15th November, 2024

Freedom At Midnight Available On: Sony LIV OTT Platform

Freedom At Midnight Released/Available In Languages: Hindi

Freedom At Midnight No. Of Episodes: 7

Freedom At Midnight Runtime: 42 Mins. Per Episode (Approx.)

Freedom At Midnight Critic Review:

Much of our history was unknown in 1975 when Freedom At Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, the bestseller documenting the backstage events that led to the bloody Partition of India, was first published.

In recent years, there has been such a glut of printed and visual information on what happened in 1947 that Indians are familiar with most of the Nehru-Gandhi-Patel-Jinnah parleys which director Nikkhil Advani sets out to preserve on film.

With six writers on board (Abhinandan Gupta, Gundeep Kaur, Adwitiya Kareng Das, Divy Nidhi Sharma, Revanta Sarabhai, Ethan Taylor), equations and situations go back to the early 1900s. Mohammed Ali Jinnah (Arif Zakaria), his pipe, his TB cough and his arrogance intact, crowns himself the voice of the Indian Muslim. With a visceral hatred for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Chirag Vohra) and his popularity, Jinnah’s insistence on a separate land for Muslims makes the bifurcation of India on religious lines, inevitable.

On Gandhi’s side of ‘batwara over my dead body’ are Jawaharlal Nehru (Sidhant Gupta) and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Rajendra Chawla), staunchly fighting for a united India.

There’s an unspoken bad guys vs good boys vibe in the narration. Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan (Rajesh Kumar) and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (Anuvab Pal) conspire like villains. The worry lines are for good boy Nehru.

Nikkhil brings brief moments of humour into the equations. When Patel jabbers in Gujarati, ‘angrez’ Jinnah responds in English, provoking a chuckle. Or, when Suharwardy makes a religious taunt at Maulana Azad, Nehru dryly remarks that he’s trying to teach Islam to a Maulana.

But it’s largely a grim narration of chunks of events and people already well known to most. And there are flashbacks at the beginning of every episode, requiring the viewer to go to another time period for context. The heart-wrenching communal riots that bloodied India during Direct Action Day and Naokhali are also dealt with dispassionately in black-n-white. It works if you want Nikkhil to move on and outline the politics behind the Partition and not linger on the devastation. Or take sides.

As the calendar moves closer to August 1947, the pace quickens with the entry of King George VI’s cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten (Luke McGibney) and the intrigues that envelope the Viceroy’s office. VP Menon (KC Shankar) given the assignment to prepare the plans for transfer of power, the Jinnah-Suhrawardy conspiracy over Bengal, the growing distance between Gandhi and his followers, and the heartbreaking Partition, chronicle how freedom came at a very high cost. Preventable? Not when humans feeding on religious fervour and personal ego pilot the fortunes of a nation.

Among the pluses, the ambience created by art director Vijay Ghodke takes you back to post-Partition India. Sidhant Gupta and Rajendra Chawla are excellent as Nehru and Patel. Interesting are Luke McGibney’s portrayal of a Mountbatten torn between the contradictory wants of different parties and Chirag Vohra’s Gandhi who swings between Gujarati and English and is obstinate about what he perceives as right.

A major problem is that viewers may have pre-determined political influences that could come into play when Nikkhil deals fleetingly with blood-curdling genocides and paints a poignant picture of Nehru.

Freedom At Midnight – Watch it or not?: Even for those who know it all, some parts of the behind-the-scenes politics will be worth adding to their store of information.

Freedom At Midnight Review Score Rating: 3 out of 5 (i.e. 3/5)

Freedom At Midnight Official Trailer: