A recent photo of the Mexican-U.S. border has attracted widespread attention from the international media.
In this photo, a mother cradles her child and cries, while the child looks blankly at the armed police officers at the Mexican-American border. With regard to migration, ethnic conflicts play out every day in all corners of the world. But today I'm not going to talk about the root cause of this problem, but I want to talk about a horror historical drama about racial beliefs, about the political disaster of terrorist attacks, "Hotel Mumbai". It's not the same type of thing, but it's related.
The film "Hotel Mumbai" is based on the serial terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and released in 2018, and after a decade, the cruelty has not dissipated with time.
On November 26, 2008, 10 terrorists from Pakistan launched a series of attacks on 12 different locations in Mumbai, India, causing more than 500 casualties, shocking the world.
As Mumbai's iconic Taj Mahal Hotel, one of the destinations of terrorist attacks, the film is based on the Taj Mahal Hotel being attacked, and the hotel staff and customers self-protection escape as the main axis of the story. However, the director did not restore it 100% according to the real events, but after artistic processing, the overall rhythm was more compact, often when we had not yet eased up, we immediately entered the next round of gun battles, there was no sensational place at all, often looking at it and clenching their fists for fear that they would be discovered by terrorists, the whole story is very realistic.
At the beginning of the film, it is an extremely ordinary morning in India, the hotel restaurant waiter Arjun is at home in a hurry to pack up and rush to work, and the heads of the hotel are preparing for the arrival of new guests. Little by little, the terrorists were getting closer to India's largest financial center. One moment it was a peaceful and busy city, the next moment there was the screams of people and the sound of machine guns, life suddenly became small and insignificant at this moment, we were in addition to shock and disbelief, such a thing really happened? This huge contrast exists in many parts of the film.
In times of crisis, when humanity is most likely to be tested, most of the hotel staff could have chosen to flee, but they stayed behind to guard the guests. The most impressive thing was that a lady misunderstood the turban that Arjun wore, arjun said that the turban was their family's belief, he had worn it since he was a child, and if one day he did not wear this turban, it would be a disgrace to the family. One moment he was explaining to his guests the importance of the headscarf to him, and the next moment he was willing to take off his own turban to save an Asian girl and cover it on the other's injured wound.
Ruthless fate does not make them lose their humanity, and often we can feel the brilliance of humanity conveyed in the film without hesitation. Whether it's arjun taking off a sacred headscarf for a stranger, or a Muslim couple looking for a child at the risk of life and death, or a hotel front desk that would rather be shot than listen to terrorists calling customers to open the door. It is precisely because of these ordinary actions, which are neither lyrical nor deliberately praiseworthy, that we feel the greatness of life and the cruelty of terrorist attacks.
There is no real protagonist in the film, each one is a protagonist, competing with life and death, and it is the director's focus on the collective that is closer to the nature of the terrorist attack. In the face of machine guns, no one is a fluke, only the most primitive fear. Everyone hugged the group, and finally waited for the moment when the troops were rescued, and we finally rejoiced for the child, and we were glad that the people who were still alive were still alive.
All in all, this is a very worthwhile movie, and if you're interested in thrillers, this one is worth watching.