The Terrorist (1998 film)

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The Terrorist is a 1999 Indian Tamil-language film directed by Santosh Sivan. The film portrays a period in the life of a 19-year-old woman, Malli, sent to assassinate a leader in South Asia through a suicide bombing. It stars Ayesha Dharker. Released in 1999, the film was shot in 15 days, with natural lighting, on a shoestring budget of ₹25 lakh (worth ₹2.2 crore in 2021 prices).

The film won a number of awards at international film festivals. Actor John Malkovich first saw the film at the 1998 Cairo International Film Festival and subsequently adopted the film as a kind of post-facto executive producer. Critic Roger Ebert has included the film in his series of "Great Movies" reviews.<ref name="GM">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Plot

The movie focuses on a 19-year-old woman named Malli (based on Kalaivani Rajaratnam), who joined a terrorist organisation at a very young age after her brother was killed in the cause. She volunteers herself to become a suicide bomber in an assassination mission. As the plot moves forward, she discovers the importance of human life, after realising she is pregnant. This causes Malli to question her determination to complete the mission.

Cast

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Inspiration

While campaigning in the 1991 Indian general election, former prime minister of India Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber, Kalaivani Rajaratnam. Rajaratnam was affiliated with the Black Tigers, a cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Film critic Roger Ebert noted that Santosh Sivan "was inspired by the assassination of the Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. But in the movie, no country is identified, no name is attached to her target, and no ideology or religion is attached to her movement."<ref>https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-terrorist-2000</ref>

Reception

Ebert concludes his review with the following line: "Every time I see the film, I feel a great sadness, that a human imagination could be so limited that it sees its own extinction as a victory." According to Ebert, it was a film ‘scripted by the camera’.<ref name="GM"/><ref name="NYT">A.O., Scott. "The Terrorist (1998)" New York Times. (2011)</ref>

Says Sivan: "One day I got a call from Samuel Lee Jackson who was interested to cast the heroine of The Terrorist, Ayesha, in a Hollywood film."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The reissued film's titles read "John Malkovich Presents" after Malkovich took a liking for the film.

Awards

Won

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Nominated

Further reading

  • Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert Pape, Random House (24 May 2005), Template:ISBN
  • Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History, An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2010. 624. Print. Template:ISBN

See also

Footnotes

  • [1]
  • Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History, An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2010. 624. Print. Template:ISBN

References

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