Israeli Embassy criticises Varun Dhawan, Janhvi Kapoor's Bawaal for trivialising holocaust

Varun Dhawan and Janhavi Kapoor's latest film Bawaal has drawn criticism from the Israeli Embassy in India and Jewish Rights groups over the film's content. They have alleged that the film trivializes the significance of the Holocaust. Bawaal has been directed by Nitesh Tiwari and written by Ashwini Iyer Tiwari and released exclusively on Prime Video.

“There was a poor choice in the utilization of some terminology in the movie, and though we assume no malice was intended, we urge everyone who may not be fully aware of the horrors of the Holocaust to educate themselves about it,” Israeli Embassy tweeted.

Meanwhile, a prominent Jewish rights group has also criticised the Bollywood film for using imagery and dialogues related to the Holocaust in bad taste.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center said the film trivialises the “suffering and systematic murder of millions”, as reported in BBC.

In a statement, it said, “By having the protagonist in this movie declare that ‘Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz’, Nitesh Tiwari, trivialises and demeans the memory of six million murdered Jews and millions of others who suffered at the hands of Hitler’s genocidal regime.”

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“If the filmmaker’s goal was to gain PR [publicity] for their movie by reportedly filming a fantasy sequence at the Nazi death camp, he has succeeded,” it added.

The group also urged Amazon Prime to remove the film from its platform. The cast and director have called the criticism against the film unwarranted, the report said.

In the trailer, Jahnvi Kapoor’s character, Nisha, says to her husband Ajay, played by Varun Dhawan, “We’re all a little bit like Hitler, aren’t we?” “We’re not happy with what we have. And we want what others have.”

In another scene in the film, she says: “Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz.”

There are also several other scenes that are intended to draw a parallel between the protagonists’ love story and the Holocaust. The film also includes a fantasy scene inside a gas chamber and uses Hitler and the Auschwitz death camp as metaphors.

In her review for WION, Shomini Sen called the film a long misplaced lesson in history. "the film ends up being a middling affair. It neither provokes any emotions in scenes where the director ably depicts some horrific episodes of World War II nor does it create an impact on Ajju's progression in the story. The backdrop of the war as a tool of self-discovery seems rather misplaced, especially when the two plots are literally from different eras," wrote Sen in her review.

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