Emergency movie review: Kangana Ranaut’s confused Indira Gandhi biopic is weak in craft

This unexpected dissonant note pretty much sets the tone of this film in which Ranaut has played the role of Indira Gandhi, which swings from showing her as a young woman growing into an autocratic leader, to a weak, vacillating mother under the influence of Sanjay, her ‘bigda hua beta’, and back again.

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The trouble is not so much Ranaut’s playing of Indira, though her accentuated voice and constant pursing of the lips comes off more a tic than a characteristic in a series of tight close-ups, but the confusion that runs through most of the film. Was Indira a powerful, autocratic leader who bested the West, in the shape of the US President Richard Nixon? Was she a decisive strategist who was instrumental in the birth of Bangladesh, with the help of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw (Milind Soman)? Or was she a paranoid creature who turned away from her close confidant, Delhi’s cultural czarina Pupul Jayakar (Mahima Chaudhary), and saw scary apparitions in the mirror, withdrawing unto the sage ministrations of J Krishnamurthy?

It’s not as if Indira Gandhi wasn’t complex enough to have all of these contradictory impulses within her, but the portrayal is wanting, with a weak craft underlining the choppy scenes, fashioned more as explainers according Ranaut, whose writing is based on (this is stated in the overlong, overstated disclaimer), among other sources, veteran journalist Coomi Kapoor’s terrific treatise on the Emergency.

The slanted version of events which unspool in the film come as no surprise. Nehru is shown as a sick, insecure man who had problems with his decisive daughter, her aunt Vijaylakshmi is an early villain who never let her mother Kamala breathe freely; later, except for her personal secretary, the forever loyal RK Dhawan who was rightfully dubbed the most important man in the PMO, she laments that everyone has deserted her, including her beloved countrymen, for whom she sacrificed everything.

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It was her Cabinet minister DK Barooh who famously intoned ‘India is Indira, Indira is India’. But Ranaut’s Indira says it not just once but twice, clearly in an attempt to underline her character’s hubris. It is the callow Sanjay Gandhi (Vishak Nair) who is shown as having struck an understanding with Sikh extremist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, not Indira. Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Shreyas Talpade), who came into his own later, has prominence; an impressed Indira calls him a ‘future PM’ after one meeting. The late Satish Kaushik gets smirking play as Jagjivan Ram, who went over to the other side. Jayaprakash Narayan’s (Anupam Kher) ‘sampoorn andolan’ is given short shrift, as is George Fernandes’s ‘rail roko abhiyaan’. Rajiv, Sonia, Menaka, the grandchildren, show up as ciphers.

The most puzzling thing about this enterprise is why it is called Emergency. Given the title, it should have been an in-depth before-and-after depiction of one of the most tumultuous periods in recent Indian history; it feels like just another rushed chapter here as are the rest of the momentous events, including Mrs Gandhi’s trial and arrest, and resurrection. And soon after, assassination.

One of the most significant events of Indira’s political career, showing Indira’s arrival, atop an elephant, in Belcchi, a tiny outpost which brought her back in power, leaves little impact: if there was something even her bitterest rivals acknowledged, it was that she was an astute, fearless politician, who kept a hold on the public imagination even in her darkest hours.

In this revisionist era, we have been flooded with films which claim to set the record straight. How about making them well? Randeep Hooda’s ‘Veer Savarkar’ was much better on practically all these metrics, including a superb lead performance. For the most part, ‘Emergency’ is more a scattershot caricature of time and place and people, riddled with tacky computer graphics: in a preposterous sequence, Manekshaw, Indira, the members of the Parliament, including Vajpayee, join in a song. Not even Ranaut’s undoubted competence as an actor, armed with that distinctive prosthetic nose, white streak of hair and tasteful handloom saris which add to the remarkable resemblance to her subject, can save it.

Emergency movie cast: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Vishak Nair, Mahima Chaudhry, Milind Soman, Satish Kaushik, Ashok Chhabra
Emergency movie director: Kangana Ranaut
Emergency movie rating: 1.5 stars