 Prerna Bhat
Cinema frequently emerges from the intersection of artistic imagination and personal memory. A filmmaker’s background, cultural location, and inherited experience often shape the emotional and thematic texture of their work, even when the narrative appears detached from autobiography. Dhurandhar, directed by Aditya Dhar, offers a useful example of how personal history can contribute to cinematic sensibility. Although not explicitly situated within the geography or politics of Kashmir, the film’s emotional atmosphere, narrative tensions, and moral orientations allow for a reading informed by Dhar’s Kashmiri Pandit heritage and the collective memory carried by the community. This analysis does not claim that Dhurandhar represents a personal testimony; rather, it reads the film as a creative text shaped by broader cultural influences that media and cultural theory consider central to artistic production.
Media theorists have long argued that no creative work exists in isolation from the socio-cultural environment that forms its maker. Stuart Hall’s work on representation emphasises that meaning is produced not simply through narrative content but also through the “structures of feeling” carried by individuals situated within specific historical contexts. Similarly, cultural memory scholars contend that inherited memory especially within communities marked by displacement works through emotional registers rather than explicit statements. Reading Dhurandhar through this framework allows for an understanding of how personal and communal experiences can permeate a film indirectly, shaping its tonal decisions, narrative ambiguities, and character arcs.
Aditya Dhar belongs to a generation of Kashmiri Pandits whose families were displaced in the early 1990s during a period of severe political violence in the Kashmir Valley. Many individuals from this generation grew up outside their homeland but were surrounded by stories of lost childhoods, fractured belonging, and disrupted continuity. Cultural theorists such as Marianne Hirsch describe this phenomenon as “postmemory”where second-generation individuals inherit traumatic memories not through direct experience but through familial narratives, silences, and emotional atmospheres. When viewed through this theoretical lens, the subdued melancholy and internalised conflict that characterise Dhar’s cinematic tone appear consistent with the emotional aftershocks of inherited displacement. Even though Dhurandhar does not portray the Kashmiri Pandit experience, its underlying sensibility reflects the gravity, restraint, and moral seriousness often found in art shaped by communities navigating historical rupture.
The film’s narrative structure contributes to this reading. Dhurandhar revolves around characters who must negotiate opaque systems, institutional pressures, and ambiguous moral choices. Instead of relying on straightforward binaries between right and wrong, the film situates its characters within complex networks of responsibility, power, and vulnerability. This narrative preference aligns with the cultural theory of “complex realism,” which argues that communities shaped by historical trauma often produce works that resist simplistic or idealised storytelling. Trauma studies scholars suggest that traumatic histories generate a preference for narratives that highlight uncertainty, fragmentation, and moral ambiguity. While Dhurandhar is not a trauma narrative, its ethical complexity and refusal to offer easy answers resonate with these theoretical insights.
The emotional tone of the film further reinforces this approach. Dhar often employs visual restraint, muted colour palettes, and slow-building tension rather than overt melodrama. This aesthetic choice can be analyzed through Raymond Williams’ concept of “structures of feeling,” where art expresses collective emotional climates that may be difficult to articulate verbally. For displaced communities like the Kashmiri Pandits, emotional restraint is a recurring theme: their histories are often told through quiet recollection, intermittent nostalgia, and subdued sorrow. The understated emotional texture of Dhurandhar—characters who internalise conflict, landscapes that echo silence, and moments that rely on pauses rather than declarations—reflects a sensibility shaped by such emotional climates.
Another key dimension arises from the film’s treatment of institutions. Dhar presents institutions not as inherently antagonistic but as complex bodies shaped by individual intentions, fragmented loyalties, and systemic limitations. Cultural theorists like Michel Foucault emphasise that institutions operate through dispersed networks of power rather than through visible hierarchies. In Dhurandhar, characters navigate a shifting terrain of rules, authority, and moral blind spots, mirroring Foucault’s idea that power functions through everyday practices rather than singular oppressive acts. This nuanced view of institutional authority parallels historical memories within displaced communities, where the absence or failure of institutional protection becomes a formative part of collective identity. Without making direct historical references, Dhar’s cinematic treatment of systems resonates with the understanding that institutions are neither wholly reliable nor entirely corrupt - they are human structures shaped by competing forces.
Narrative ambiguity plays a central role in the film’s philosophical orientation. Dhar constructs a world where characters are motivated by mixed impulses, often acting under pressure, fear, or incomplete information. Cultural theorists argue that ambiguity in storytelling often arises from worldviews shaped by layered, contested, or unresolved histories. Kashmir itself is a region marked by competing narratives, political tensions, and multiple forms of memory. For a filmmaker emerging from a community deeply connected to such a history, narrative ambiguity becomes a natural creative register. It allows the film to avoid simplistic moral judgments and instead present a mosaic of conflicting truths. Such an approach echoes Hall’s argument that meaning is not stable; it is produced through cultural negotiation and interpretive struggle.
In terms of aesthetic form, Dhurandhar demonstrates Dhar’s preference for atmospheric building rather than plot-driven momentum. The slow intensification of tension, the reliance on gaze and silence, and the emphasis on psychological interiority reflect an artistic choice consistent with the cinematic tradition influenced by memory and lived experience. Film theorists argue that directors shaped by collective trauma often employ visual minimalism to convey emotional complexity. This minimalism is not merely stylistic; it becomes a method of representing interior landscapes that cannot be easily verbalised. The film’s atmospheric quietness suggests a world where characters carry burdens larger than the immediate narrative reveals a characteristic of postmemory narratives where emotional inheritance exceeds explicit storytelling.
Moreover, Dhar’s focus on moral responsibility in Dhurandhar aligns with the ethical tension often present in cinema shaped by personal or cultural histories of injustice. The characters face circumstances that force them to confront not only external dilemmas but also internal moral struggles. Media theorists describe such portrayals as part of “ethical realism,” where characters operate within morally uncertain worlds, making the narrative a space for exploring ethical complexity rather than moral instruction. This approach connects to communities whose histories remain unresolved or insufficiently acknowledged; their narratives often resist closure, mirroring lived realities that lack definite resolution. Dhurandhar embodies this sensibility through its refusal to grant easy redemption or categorical blame.
The film’s treatment of identity further supports this interpretive frame. Instead of portraying identity as static or essential, Dhar constructs characters shaped by circumstances, environments, and institutional structures. This relational view of identity aligns with contemporary cultural theory, which argues that identity is produced through context, history, and power rather than through inherent qualities. For a filmmaker emerging from a community displaced from its homeland, identity naturally becomes a fluid concept shaped by loss, re-rooting, adaptation, and negotiation. Although Dhurandhar does not explicitly explore Kashmiri identity, its characters’ shifting sense of self mirrors the instability associated with displaced subjectivities.
Memory studies offer another useful framework for understanding Dhar’s cinematic sensibility. Scholars like Aleida Assmann highlight how cultural memory operates not simply through direct recollection but through emotional atmospheres, narrative rhythms, and patterns of representation. Dhurandhar, with its careful pacing and atmospheric nuance, reflects an attention to memory’s subtle influence on human experience. Even without referencing Kashmir, the film carries an undertone of unresolved longing, quiet tension, and subdued grief - elements consistent with the emotional memory of displaced communities. These aesthetic choices suggest the presence of what memory scholars call “affective residue” - the influence of unspoken histories on creative expression.
The film can also be examined through the theoretical lens of “cinema of precarity,” where narratives focus on individuals navigating unstable social worlds. The characters in Dhurandhar are situated within precarious moral and institutional environments, navigating situations that lack predictable outcomes. Cultural theorists argue that precarity as a narrative mode often emerges from societies or communities shaped by instability and uncertainty. The emotional undercurrent of precarity in the film though not directly tied to Kashmir - reflects a worldview shaped by historical disruption and scattered belonging.
Taken together, these theoretical frameworks reveal how Dhar’s background may subtly influence the tone and thematic foundation of Dhurandhar. The film does not serve as a political statement or personal autobiography. Instead, it becomes an example of how personal history can manifest in artistic creation through atmosphere, narrative complexity, ethical ambiguity, and emotional restraint. The film’s power lies not in its explicit references but in its quiet resonances its potential to reflect the emotional world of a filmmaker shaped by inherited memory.
Understanding Dhurandhar through this interpretive lens does not diminish its narrative autonomy; rather, it enriches the viewing experience by situating the film within the broader cultural and emotional environment from which Dhar emerges. Media and cultural theory remind us that cinema is always more than plot and character; it is a convergence of memory, affect, history, and imagination. Dhar’s film exemplifies how personal histories can shape creative choices even without direct representation, offering insight into the subtle ways in which cultural identity continues to influence artistic expression.
Potential Sources
None of the above text is copied from these sources, they are simply related readings.
Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Sage.
Hirsch, M. (2012). The generation of postmemory: Writing and visual culture after the Holocaust. Columbia University Press.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press.
Assmann, A. (2011). Cultural memory and Western civilization. Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage.
Sarkar, B. (2009). Trauma and affect in South Asian cinema. South Asian Popular Culture.
Prerna bhat is pursuing masters in Mass communication from Jamia milia Islamia New Delhi |
