Ravi Jadhav’s take on former Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee's life is less of a creative take and more of a hagiographic portrait
Main Atal Hoon has been termed as a biographical drama but that billing could well be seen as a facade. The film begins in 1999 at the height of the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan and the very first frame reveals Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to be deep in thought. As a panel of the defence think tank alarms him about the challenges and the strife that lies ahead, he pauses pondering and eloquently asserts that though his core has always sought peace all around, he will not step back from aggression if push comes to shove. And when his Pakistani counterpart reaches out to him on the phone that very moment, he ensures that a stern warning is issued to the padosi, nevertheless in his trademark poetic manner.
Now, this scene functions in multiple ways. First, it tells us how Atal Bihari Vajpayee operated as a statesman, as someone who is negotiating belligerence in his own subdued manner. It's the classic exposition scene of a character who is dogged, fierce but also incredibly graceful in the face of adversity. In the same vein, this opening scene initiates us into a pattern that the rest of the film follows almost mercilessly. From 1999, we are dropped straight into Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s childhood, when the charismatic leader of the future is at present battling stage fright. Only seconds ago, we saw tough men bow to his charm and the strength of his character but here, young Atal is becoming a laughing stock in front of his friends.
The new scene comes in perfect contrast to the previous one — both visually and metaphorically — and teases us with a biopic that might be worth our time. Could Ravi Jadhav, who has delivered seminal Marathi films like Natarang and Balak-Palak, finally end Hindi cinema’s biopic epidemic and lend the age-old template a new edge? So far, so good. Alas, the answer, a resounding NO, occurs not more than a few minutes later when we realize that Main Atal Hoon is less of a creative take on a man’s life and more of a hagiographic portrait.
An Agenda in Search of a Film
To discuss what exactly is wrong with Main Atal Hoon is to answer the question of why we need biopics. What exactly draws a filmmaker or a screenwriter to trace the life of a person, especially one whose journey is already detailed on Wikipedia? Is it the curiosity to bring certain landmark events to life and decorate them for posterity (as in, make it less boring)? Or is it the desire to trim off the frills and capture the essence of a being as influential and occasionally polarizing as Atal Bihari Vajpayee (like Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, for instance)? Somehow, and unfortunately, most films fit into the former bracket but when done well, you might have for yourselves a polished and aggrandised piece that could still be engaging.
But interestingly, Ravi Jadhav’s latest film is part of neither two categories. Main Atal Hoon is remarkably reverential, mind you, but its problems don’t lie there. They rather emerge from the fact that the film mistakes a formula for laziness and ends up relying on a script that is unbelievably one-toned. The same scene, featuring the young Atal, serves as the model for what I mean here. In that, as the kid rushes back home, he is followed by his congenial father (played by Piyush Mishra) who sits him down for a quick speech. Again, a solid speech of the ‘cinematic’ kind would have worked even if we have encountered thousands of them in the past. But that's not what we get.
Atal’s father tells him that he must have the courage and that he must look in the eyes of his naysayers. In a matter of a few moments, the boy finds the courage, the conviction he needs to go on to become one of the most idolised orators in Indian administration.
You see where the problem is, don’t you? In a narrative that’s offering you the story of a man who wasn’t just a politician but also a thinker, a romantic and a poet, Main Atal Hoon fails to do the bare minimum of simply underlining some of its subject’s many enterprising facets. Instead, it gets caught up in an agenda to proclaim a kind of political ideology and ends up being a wishy-washy exercise that is neither fun nor eliciting. At best, Ravi Jadhav’s film is a barrage of events, a highlight reel, if you will, of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s life — from his days as an RSS swayamsevak, Bharatiya Jana Sangh secretary and eventually as a national leader — and annoyingly, is still a very shallow attempt at that.
Refuses To Dig Deep
A fascinating detail of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s life comes from his personal life, particularly from the fact that he chose to remain a bachelor his entire life in service of his ideology and the nation. But, of course, there is a lot more nuance to this aspect of his personality and many would know about his adopted daughter and his extended household comprising her parents Rajkumari Kaul and BN Kaul.
Main Atal Hoon, however, doesn’t bother to make much of this either. We see in one of the early scenes of the film that the character strikes a chord with Rajkumari during their college days in Gwalior. There’s a spark between them that’s beyond conventional romance and we sense that it is a result of mutual respect. Years later, we are told, they reunite but as friends and intellectual companions. The opportunity to explore this extremely rich dynamic is squandered by the writers and this bit too is swallowed up by the relentless screenplay which, at this point, almost seems to have been written by AI.
Pankaj Tripathi ‘Nosedives’ Into This Role
As an actor, Pankaj Tripathi has played roles of myriad kinds but one gathers that this particular one allowed him to flex more than most others possibly did. But does he fare well in this expedition? Well, maybe not as well as one would have liked him to. While his grasp of the Hindi language allows him to bring a top level of cadence to the performance (most distinctively during the monologues or when he is reciting poetry), the lack of clear intent on the film’s part renders his role more as an impersonation.
Though the makers somehow recreate a semblance of Atal Bihari Vajpayee through prosthetics and hair, the performance still doesn’t impress because the writing stifles the role to a large extent. The gesturing, the trying to reproduce that drawled-out rhythm and the overall demeanour of the real-life person are all there, but they just do not suffice. No doubt, the film would have rather benefitted from a well-etched central character whose virtues and flaws are discussed openly.
That’s the case with almost all other characters and Main Atal Hoon doesn’t shy away from presenting a movie version of almost every politician in the realm. From noted names like Deendayal Upadhyay, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, L.K. Advani to Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan and Arun Jaitley, the film merely borrows a quirk from the real-life people and does nothing inventive with them. Expectedly, none of the characters have a bearing on us, let alone the story.
There’s no doubt that Main Atal Hoon is injected with the makers’ own ideology. While they have complete autonomy to do so, the problem lies in the fact that the product in return is an undaunted tribute and nothing more. As pointed out, Ravi Jadhav works on a script that seems more like the answer of a ten-year-old to a five-mark question and less like a document that chronicles the vibrant yet equally unflashy life of a statesman. It’s a film loaded with broad strokes but those too aren’t very fulfilling because over the course of two hours and 20 minutes, what we get is a history lesson. As a result, the search for that compelling Hindi biopic only continues.
