Film: One Less God
Cast: Joseph Mahler Taylor, Kabir Singh, Kieran Kumar, Sukhraj Deepak, Mihika Rao
Director: Lliam Worthington
Rating: * * *
Lliam Worthington’s film “One Less God” endeavours to take the viewer into the recesses of human nature while presenting a fictional rendition of India’s 9/11 – focusing on the horrific three-day siege of the Taj Mahal Hotel in November 2008. One wishes he hadn’t ignored the slaughter at CSMT rail station, or Leopold’s or the Jewish centre located in a Colaba by lane. But the filmmaker opts for the Taj alone as the setting of a story told from the perspectives of both hostages and two Pakistani militants from the ten who sailed to Mumbai to exact revenge for the destruction of the Babri Masjid by right-wing Hindus.
The exuberant hues of Holi are juxtaposed with the splatter of crimson as the narrative unfolds with a voice-over by young Irish national Sean (Joseph Mahler Taylor), who is exploring India’s fabled spiritual traditions and finds himself holed up in a room with a French journalist, a suicidal Chinese businessman, wacky Jewish newly-weds, a pair of squabbling Turkish siblings and a grievously injured senior citizen who keeps up her fighting spirit by cracking self-deprecating jokes. In another suite, we see a loving grandfather (Sukhraj Deepak) and his grandchild Atiya (Mihika Rao) who have come to the city to visit a terminally-ill parent.
What ensues is a battle for survival as the terrorist duo Yaaseen (Kabir Singh) and Ahmad (Kieran Kumar) employ their arsenal – grenades, machine guns, and arson – at the behest of their handler in Pakistan who is aided by running commentaries from feckless television crews camping at the Gateway. The heroic Taj service staff is distilled into the composite character of a young waiter.
It’s not clear though why Worthington chooses to blame a French TV station alone or depicts the terrorist duo as drug-addled duffers. What other label can be given to minds indoctrinated by hate and the belief that 99 virgins await in Paradise as reward for “inflicting as much damage as possible” on us kafirs?