DIRECTING IN THE STYLE OF ADITYA DHAR

The Principle

Aditya Dhar emerged as one of Indian cinema's most striking directorial voices with a debut that redefined what Hindi-language action filmmaking could achieve. Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), based on the Indian Army's 2016 cross-border operation in response to a terrorist attack, announced a filmmaker with an unusual combination of talents: the ability to render military operations with procedural authenticity rare in Bollywood, the instinct to scale intimate human emotion to match the grandeur of nationalist narrative, and the technical command to deliver action sequences that stand alongside the best international combat cinema while remaining distinctly Indian in their emotional register.

What distinguishes Dhar from other directors working in Indian patriotic cinema is his commitment to process. Where lesser war films skip from provocation to climactic battle, Dhar is fascinated by the machinery of decision-making: the intelligence briefings, the political deliberation, the logistical planning, the training regimens, the chain of command. Uri devotes as much screen time to the preparation for the surgical strike as to the strike itself, and this investment in process creates a tension and a payoff that pure action filmmaking cannot achieve. When the operation finally launches, the audience understands what is at stake at every level, from the geopolitical to the personal, because Dhar has taken the time to build the architecture of consequence.

Dhar's visual style fuses the scale and emotional intensity of mainstream Hindi cinema with a gritty, desaturated aesthetic influenced by international war cinema. His action sequences are kinetic and visceral, shot with a combination of handheld urgency and precisely choreographed tactical movement that communicates both the chaos of combat and the discipline of trained operators. His dramatic scenes are played at the high emotional register that Indian audiences expect, with the performances of actors like Vicky Kaushal delivering intensity that never tips into melodrama because it is grounded in physical specificity and procedural detail.

The Procedural as Dramatic Architecture

Intelligence and Deliberation

Dhar structures his narratives around the procedural chain that connects intelligence to action. In Uri, the film traces the full arc from the terrorist attack at the army base, through the intelligence gathering that identifies the perpetrators' location across the Line of Control, through the political decision to authorize a retaliatory strike, through the military planning and training, to the execution of the operation. Each phase receives detailed attention, and each creates its own form of suspense: Will the intelligence be accurate? Will the politicians authorize the mission? Will the training prepare the soldiers for what they will face? Will the plan survive contact with the enemy?

This procedural structure transforms what could be a simple revenge narrative into a complex meditation on institutional decision-making. Dhar shows that military action is not the product of individual heroism but of collective will: intelligence officers, political leaders, military commanders, and frontline soldiers all contribute to the outcome, and the film respects each contribution.

The Briefing Room as Theater

Dhar treats briefing rooms, war rooms, and command centers as dramatic spaces equal in importance to the battlefield. His camera finds tension in the arrangement of officers around a table, in the display of tactical maps and satellite imagery, in the exchange of pointed dialogue between military commanders and civilian politicians. These scenes are lit with the cold blue of monitors and the warm amber of overhead lighting, creating a visual contrast that reflects the tension between technological distance and human stakes. The briefing room is where the abstract, geopolitics, strategy, rules of engagement, confronts the concrete: soldiers who will risk their lives.

Military Authenticity and the Operator Aesthetic

The Trained Body

Dhar photographs military personnel with a respect for physical competence that is both admiring and documentary. Training sequences in Uri are filmed with attention to specific drills, equipment handling, and tactical formations that communicate authentic military culture. Vicky Kaushal's physical transformation for the role, his movement patterns, his handling of weapons, his interaction with fellow operators, all contribute to a portrayal of military professionalism that grounds the film's more dramatic moments in physical reality.

Night Operations and Tactical Cinematography

The surgical strike sequence in Uri, set at night, is a showcase of Dhar's tactical cinematography. The operation is filmed with a combination of night-vision green aesthetics, infrared illumination, and moonlit natural lighting that creates a visual environment simultaneously realistic and cinematic. The camera moves with the operators, low to the ground, quick around corners, pausing at points of cover. The editing maintains spatial clarity even in darkness, so that the audience always understands the geography of the operation: which building, which room, which direction the threat comes from. This tactical clarity, the ability to make chaotic action legible, is Dhar's most impressive technical achievement.

Sound Design of Combat

Dhar's combat sound design emphasizes the distinction between the silence of approach and the violence of engagement. The surgical strike's opening minutes are nearly silent: footsteps on dirt, whispered radio communications, the ambient sounds of a rural night. When the shooting begins, the sound erupts with a force amplified by the preceding silence. Gunfire is loud, concussive, and spatially specific, the audience can hear the direction and distance of each shot. This contrast between silence and violence is a Dhar signature, using audio dynamics to create physiological tension and release.

Nationalism and the Emotional Register

Patriotism as Lived Experience

Dhar's patriotic cinema differs from propaganda in a crucial way: it locates nationalism not in abstract ideology but in the lived experience of individuals who serve. The soldiers in Uri are not symbols of the state; they are people with families, fears, and personal motivations. One carries guilt about his father's military death. Another is about to become a father. These personal stakes do not diminish the patriotic narrative; they give it human weight. When Dhar's soldiers risk their lives for the nation, the audience understands "the nation" not as an abstraction but as the sum of the people they love.

The Rallying Cry

Uri created one of Indian cinema's most iconic catchphrases: "How's the josh?" ("How's the spirit?"), delivered as a call-and-response between commanding officer and troops. Dhar stages these moments with the instinct of a crowd-pleaser, understanding that patriotic cinema requires moments of collective exaltation that the audience can participate in. But he earns these moments through the accumulation of tension and sacrifice that precedes them. The rallying cry works because the audience has witnessed what the soldiers have endured; the spirit is genuine because the cost has been real.

The Emotional Crescendo

Dhar builds his films toward emotional climaxes that fuse action fulfillment with personal catharism. The conclusion of Uri's surgical strike is not merely a military victory; it is an emotional resolution of the grief, anger, and determination that the film's opening act established. Dhar allows his characters, and his audience, to feel the full weight of both the cost and the achievement, creating a cathartic experience that operates simultaneously on patriotic and personal registers.

Visual Style and Cinematic Language

The Desaturated Palette with Warm Accents

Dhar's visual palette is desaturated and steely, influenced by international war cinema, but punctuated by warm accents that are distinctly Indian: the amber of lamplight in a family home, the gold of military insignia, the orange of fire and explosion. This combination creates a visual world that is grittier than traditional Bollywood but warmer than Hollywood war films, occupying a tonal space that is Dhar's own.

Aerial and Establishing Geography

Dhar uses aerial photography and wide establishing shots to communicate the scale and geography of military operations. Mountain ranges, border terrain, the layout of enemy compounds, these are rendered with a clarity that serves both spectacle and strategy. The audience understands the physical challenges of the operation because Dhar has shown them the terrain, and this geographical understanding intensifies the suspense of the action sequences.

The Close-Up as Emotional Anchor

Against the scale of military operations and geopolitical stakes, Dhar anchors his narrative in close-ups of faces: the determination of a commander, the fear of a soldier before combat, the grief of a widow, the resolve of a political leader. These close-ups are held long enough for the audience to read complex emotions, creating a counterpoint to the wide-shot scale of the military narrative. The macro and the micro, the nation and the individual, are held in constant tension through Dhar's visual strategy.

Writing/Directing Specifications

1. 1.Build the procedural architecture before the action. Devote substantial screen time to the intelligence, deliberation, planning, and training that precede military action. The audience should understand the full chain of decision-making so that the action, when it arrives, carries the weight of everything that led to it.

1. 1.Treat briefing rooms as dramatic spaces. The tension of strategic deliberation should be filmed with the same intensity as combat. Use the visual contrast between cold technology (monitors, maps, satellite feeds) and warm humanity (faces, voices, gestures) to create visual interest in static scenes.

1. 1.Film military operations with tactical clarity. The audience should always understand the geography, the plan, the threats, and the progress of any operation. Use establishing shots to orient, close-ups to anchor, and editing to maintain spatial logic even in chaotic action.

1. 1.Use the silence-to-violence dynamic. Build tension through silence, near-silence, and ambient sound before erupting into the full volume of combat. The contrast between the two states should create a physiological experience of tension and release.

1. 1.Ground nationalism in personal stakes. Every patriotic moment should be earned through the establishment of individual characters whose personal losses, fears, and hopes make the abstract cause concrete. The nation is its people; the people are the emotional content.

1. 1.Desaturate the palette but preserve warmth. The visual world should be grittier than mainstream Bollywood but warmer than Hollywood war cinema. Use steely blues and grays for military and political settings, warm ambers and golds for domestic and emotional settings.

1. 1.Build toward emotional crescendos that fuse action and catharsis. The climactic sequences should resolve both the tactical and emotional threads simultaneously. Military victory and personal resolution should arrive together, creating a cathartic experience that operates on multiple registers.

1. 1.Earn the rallying cry. Moments of collective exaltation, slogans, chants, speeches, should come only after the audience has witnessed the cost that makes the spirit genuine. Earned patriotism moves audiences; unearned patriotism alienates them.

1. 1.Use aerial photography to establish scale and terrain. Wide shots of the operational landscape should serve both spectacle and strategy, showing the audience the physical challenges that the characters must overcome.

1. 1.Anchor every large-scale event in a single face. Against the sweep of geopolitics and military operations, the most important image is always the human face: determined, afraid, grieving, resolved. The close-up is the emotional anchor that keeps the audience connected to the human story inside the national one.