Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

It indeed is a fortuitous moment that exactly 25 years after Indian Army landed in Siachen and made that frozen landscape a part of its duty to protect the frontiers, a film, FROZEN, is releasing in the Indian market that tries to grapple with the nuances of the natives who have to adjust to the fait accompli of Army staring them in every walk of their life. FROZEN is also a film that is releasing in black and white after twenty-five years and it marks the return of Danny Dengzongpa to the silver screen in a powerful role. It has however taken two years for the film to release as the film was completed in2007 itself, may be, it had to coincide with the 25 years of landing at Siachen.

Snow as a landscape has such a fascination that in one form or the other it finds expression as a backdrop in the Hindi films, or for that matter any film that seeks to juxtapose the ephemeral nature of the human being against the tall and imposing look of the frozen mountains.

FROZEN's difference lies in the fact that it is a story which is from the perspective of a native and his feelings about the sense of loss in his own territory. Films have been shot in the snow but they have been more in the nature of valor of the army and they add to the aura of the army and its personnel. Be it HINDUSTAN KI KASAM, LALKAR, HAQEEQAT, LOC KARGIL, ROZA etc., all, in nearly all the films the natives have never been used as a subject, but the physical landscape in the form of snow supplements as the native for the landscape. Frozen interestingly has been a music album brought out by Madonna, and a film by the same name was built in China in 2004.

FROZEN is a film that has been shot extensively in landscape and brings on to the silver screen for the first time the haunted beauty of the rugged terrain of Ladakh. No wonder the film got the best cinematography award in 2007 at Dubai International Festival, it being conferred on Shankar Raman, the cinematographer of the film. Directed by Shivaji Chandrabhushan, FROZEN would surely emerge as the veritable tool to market the beauty of Ladakh as also being into relief the day-to-day struggle of the people who live in such high altitudes of the country. Would it give a new meaning to the role of the army in the snowy areas would be worth seeing.