Opinionated cinema is not new to Bollywood. From the time ‘Neecha Nagar’ had won the top honors at Cannes Film Festival, to biopics glorifying dreaded gangsters like Abdul Lateef, Dawood Ibrahim, Manya Surve etc., Bollywood has always had a penchant for opinionated cinema. Anything that went against their ideals was bound to tank at the box office, no matter how power packed the performances and how caustic and hard hitting the script and dialogues, though there have been a few worthy exceptions, like ‘Border’, ‘The Ghazi Attack’, ‘Veer Savarkar’ ‘The Legend of Bhagat Singh’ ‘Kissa Kursi Ka’ etc.
With the advent of Narendra Modi as the PM of India, it seems that nationalist cinema is slowly making a significant comeback on the forum of Indian cinema. With Vivek Agnihotri boldly making ‘Buddha in a Traffic Jam’, a take on Naxalism invading our academic institutions, though with mixed results, people with a flair for nationalist, center right cinema, a relatively unexplored genre in mainstream Hindi cinema as of now, are coming up to the fore. Into this league steps in famous, though controversial, multiple National Award winning filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar.
In case you don’t know who Madhur Bhandarkar is, you know nothing about Bollywood then, for Madhur Bhandarkar, right with his second movie, ‘Chandni Bar’ [his debut ‘Trishakti’ was largely ignored], had a knack of making movies which served as a glaring mirror to the so called high class society. Following up with major critical successes like ‘Page 3’, ‘Corporate’, ‘Satta’, ‘Traffic Signal’, ‘Fashion’, which romped home several National as well as Filmfare awards, Madhur Bhandarkar was counted as one of the emerging powerhouses of Indian filmmaking, which continued with a few lapses till the time his last successful movie, ‘Dil to Bachcha Hai Ji’ was released.
His next movie, ‘Heroine’, starring Aishwarya Rai initially, later replaced by Kareena Kapoor owing to the former’s sudden pregnancy, had a mixed business at the box office, while his last movie till date, ‘Calendar Girls’, a take on the famous supermodels posing for calendar photos like in the case with Kingfisher’s popular New Year calendars, tanked brutally at the box office, owing to the shoddy content and pathetic acting of the protagonists of the movie.
Madhur Bhandarkar was now ridiculed as a ‘spent force’ by the self declared critics from Bollywood, who will freeze at the mere mention of Dawood Ibrahim, but will take no time in lampooning ‘Buddha in a Traffic Jam’, without even watching the movie at all.
Until Madhur Bhandarkar came up with ‘ Indu Sarkar ’, a caustic take on the darkest phase in the Indian democracy, the Indira Emergency, declared in response to the disqualification of Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India.
Going by the trailer, I tend to think, is ‘ Indu Sarkar ’ the moment for the return of Madhur Bhandarkar as the classic filmmaker he is? Maybe yes, if we go strictly by the trailer, which is really explosive in terms of content, to say the least.
The trailer begins with the dreaded announcement of ‘President has declared an emergency’, with intervening shots showing the havoc the power hungry mother son duo had wreaked upon the rest of India, just to satiate their infinite lust for power. It’s rare, that a director, whose previous film had flopped massively, would take on such a bold subject, and execute it with such finesse, that you’d feel absolute disgust on the episode of Emergency with the mere portrayal of the silver screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh-_gR6a5JE
The trailer then focuses on Indu Sarkar, a poet with a stutter, who apart from her poetry, just wishes to keep her small family happy, until the monster of Emergency unleashes its terror on the hapless masses of India. Much to her chagrin, her husband, essayed charmingly by Bengali sensation Tota Roy Chowdhury, instead of supporting her in this fight, cowers in fear and deserts her and her children. Fed up with the passive action of the middle class, Indu Sarkar decides to join the fight against the oppressive system, controlled by the menacing sadist named Sanjay Gandhi, essayed with a surprising fluency by Neil Nitin Mukesh.
She joins hands with an underground revolutionary organization, led by the ever charismatic Anupam Kher, possibly essaying an important role loosely inspired by the chief voice of dissent against the Emergency, ‘Loknayak’ Jai Prakash Narayan. How the stuttering Indu Sarkar becomes an instrumental voice in bringing down the tyranny of emergency will unravel in cinema halls, if the film is released, as planned, by 28th of July.
Indu Sarkar: Kriti Kulhari in a still from the trailer
Here are the 8 interesting pictures from the trailer, that must be making Congress really Nervous:
- An absolutely stunning Neil Nitin Mukesh as Sanjay Gandhi – It’s almost spooky, how he looks so much like Sanjay Gandhi. Sanjay Gandhi has NEVER been enacted in Cinema before this
2. Police Raj – Emergency was infamous for Lathi Charges and illegal detentions. Looks like Bhandarkar has made sure the police horrors of 1975 are replayed for everyone to watch
3. Does anyone see a young Jagdish Tytler here?
4. Jai Prakash Narayan – Looks like the Old Socialist who toppled Indira’s chair will be represented in his full glory
5. The ever-dependable Anupam Kher – Wonder what he might be playing in the movie? My guess is that he might be playing Journalist Ramnath Goenka in the movie
7. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was hounded in the emergency, this scene beautifully captures their struggle
We hope that Mr. Bhandarkar does complete justice to the subject, as promised by the trailer.