Director: Ravi Jadhav
Writers: Ravi Jadhav, Rishi Virman
Cast: Pankaj Tripathi, Raja Rameshkumar Sevak, Piyush Mishra, Payal Nair, Pramod Pathak
Runtime: 139 minutes
It’s hard to go wrong with the story of a politician who’s also a poet. It’s harder to go wrong with a ready-made brew of art and diplomacy. Imagine the inbuilt lyricism, the cinematic licence, the oratory swag, the lonely mindscape and the literary motifs. Imagine the provocative marriage of words and visuals. Imagine the philosophical depth and cultural acumen. Imagine the natural chemistry between narrative and subtext. Imagine the rhyme and reason. (Imagine all of the above in John Lennon’s voice.) Yet, against all odds, director Ravi Jadhav manages to do the impossible. He goes wrong with Main Atal Hoon, an unimaginative 139-minute biopic of former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Bullet-point storytelling is not new to a Hindi hagiography, but Main Atal Hoon commits the unique crime of sacrificing the famous personality of a statesman at the altar of new-age discourse. Not for the first time, a person of history is reduced to the language of the future. A man is reduced to a series of shallow moments.
An Imposing Retrospective Take
This lack of integrity is inextricably linked to a lack of craft. The first few lines of the opening disclaimer — “this film intends to inspire patriotism, nationalism and reverence of our great nation not only amongst the youth but people at large” — set the stage. This is an unabashed tribute, so the timeline of a country exists to serve the timelessness of a leader. The film-making is stagey, dull, laboured, and too apprehensive to be curious. A Gold Spot bottle being opened during a movie screening of Sangam (1964) is probably the sharpest period detail. The cinematography in the archival footage is more ambitious than the starchy palette of the film. (The lotus iconography is shot with zero aesthetic.) The sound design unfolds like a Hitchcockian nightmare; every other line reverberates through the frames, making it difficult to distinguish the voice-over from the lofty dialogue. The background characters look like they have stage fright at a costume ball.