Main Atal Hoon movie review: Pankaj Tripathi nails Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but can’t save this reductive film – The Indian Express
That ‘Most important Atal Hoon’ could be a stroke-by-stroke retelling of the excessive factors of an illustrious political personage comes as no shock. However the truth that Ravi Jadhav, the director of the marvellous musical ‘Natrang’, reduces this bio-pic of India’s tenth Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to such a rah-rah hagiography is a deep disappointment: the poet-turned-politician, a staunch follower of the RSS, and a dedicated believer within the idea of the Hindu Rashtra, was a vibrant, charismatic character, and this movie doesn’t do justice to his a number of aspects.
For a piece of in the present day’s viewers, simply the truth that the movie — extra a step-by-step handbook of how the Hindu Proper got here to energy moderately than a deep, layered dive into Atal Bihari’s life and occasions — exists, will likely be trigger for celebration. Coming because it does, proper earlier than the Ram Mandir inauguration, with the Lok Sabha elections down the street, the timing, for the ruling dispensation, can’t be extra good.
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However what we’d have preferred is a way more rigorous, demanding biography: how did Atal, the schoolboy who grew to become tongue-tied on a stage, change into such a talented orator? How did one little lecture from his father (Piyush Mishra) do the job? How did younger Atal change into a member of his ‘shakha’, studying to twirl the lathi, whereas being imbued by the ideology of the Sangh? He grew to become a younger man when India was nonetheless below the British Raj, and patriotism was within the air, however what stirred his blood, apart from his stunning classmate Rajkumari (Ekta Kaul)?
Pankaj Tripathi, In and As Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was born to play this half. His command over Hindi, and the rhythms of his speech are so hypnotic that we get swept away, however even an actor of Tripathi’s calibre can’t do a lot with such a reductive script. What we may have gotten is a rounded portrait of a budding neta who was instrumental in shaping the early Jan Sangh, the formation of the short-lived Janata Celebration, and the beginning of the present BJP. Even supposing he by no means budged from his early moorings, and that his ‘mukhauta’ by no means shifted, he managed to straddle political divides, and have become an enormously well-liked chief and statesmen, because the Indian international minister, and prime minister.
Watch the Most important ATAL Hoon trailer right here:
What we get, as a substitute, is a one-sided account of these tumultuous years when India was being fashioned right into a republic, the place the movie continuously reminds us that the ruling Congress, below Nehru and Indira, couldn’t do something in regards to the widespread ‘gareebi’ and the ‘bhukhmari’; that corruption within the highest locations (a reference to Sanjay Gandhi’s Maruti mission and the nasbandi drive comes up) had eaten up the innards of the nation. Whereas a few of that was certainly true, to fully clean out the whole lot else that took root, makes this, fairly merely, unjustly mealy-mouthed.
So enamoured is the movie with its main topic that each one different figures inside its personal celebration who rose to prominence round that point are became ciphers: Lal Krishna Advani ( Raja Sevak) is essentially the most unfairly handled, turning into ‘the pal’ who introduces the hard-working Vajpayee to the magic of cinema, and little else; the actors taking part in Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan barely get a look-in, as Vajpayee’s highlights — the nuclear bomb, the Lahore bus, and the Kargil conflict — get most play. Atal’s relationship with Rajkumari and her household, and the menage they created, is so sanitised– being became extra his responsibility, than ardour– that you just can not take it critically, even when Kaul is kind of beautiful, leaving fairly an influence.
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What we’re left with is Tripathi, who nails Vajpayee’s attribute neck-shake and flinging-of-the-hands, whereas orating out and in of Parliament. He’s extra character than caricature, and that’s the one purpose to sit down by means of this two and a half hour movie.
Most important Atal Hoon film forged: Pankaj Tripathi, Piyush Mishra, Raja Sevak, Ekta Kaul, Daya Shankar Pandey, Pramod Pathak, Payal Nair, Harshad Kumar
Most important Atal Hoon film director: Ravi Jadhav
Most important Atal Hoon film score: 2 stars
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