The Vaccine War movie review: Vivek Agnihotri’s tribute to Covid warriors, and atmanirbharta

This is territory less fraught than the others Agnihotri has trod unsubtly in recent past, most famously in The Kashmir Files. Few would grudge the untainted heroes of The Vaccine War: the scientific community that toils away in obscurity in thankless jobs and labs, even if they talk the talk that aligns with the government’s, from the emphasis on “atmanirbharta” to the slamming of “anti-India ecosystems” to the finger-pointing at China.

In fact, there is plenty to like in The Vaccine War. Described as India’s first “bio-science film”, it bravely spends a lot of time on scientific terms, and in spartan NIV (National Institute of Virology) labs, over trials of mice and monkeys. There is no effort to spice up the research or jazz up the highly anaesthetised environments in which breakthroughs are made. On the contrary, Agnihotri’s devotion to his subject – with obviously the government’s full cooperation and access – veers the film often towards the look and feel of a public service broadcast.

The Vaccine War also whitewashes almost entirely the human misery of Covid, the pains of the immediate lockdown (which is projected as a proud achievement), the deaths caused due to lack of beds and oxygen, and the government playing catch up (the only blame allotted is to the Delhi government, “for procuring four times its requirement of oxygen”).

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The only real revelation, as the film ticks every government achievement of those days, is the hunt by NIV teams for rhesus macaque monkeys, to do trials on, in the deep jungles of Nagpur.

Based on a book by the then Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Balram Bhargava, the man at the centre of the Covid scientific rollercoaster, the film uses names of real people across the ICMR and NIV – a rarity for a mainstream Bollywood film, and perhaps telling of its official provenance.

What lifts The Vaccine War is the fact that the story of Bhargava and his team of mostly devoted, hardworking women is worth telling. Bhargava, played to curmudgeonly effect by Patekar, is in the mould of those unlikely, self-effacing heroes that films adore – who lives simply, doesn’t use a smartphone, advocates eating without spoon as “fingertips trigger hunger”, adds ghee to food for “intelligence”, etc etc.

But, it’s The Vaccine War’s women who add light and depth to the story of Covaxin. There is Joshi playing NIV Director Priya Abraham, juggling her son’s wedding preparations with isolating SARS-CoV2; the head of the NIV lab which will achieve this, Pragya Yadav (Bhattacharya), who will turn to her neurosurgeon husband for help at a crucial time in the monkey trials; and ICMR epidemiology specialist Nivedita Gupta (Oak), who has to push away her crying, medically depressed son to head back to work. All three, especially Bhattacharya, are effective in their roles.

The women – and there are others – are who they are, doing their jobs like everyone else, neither dressed up, nor played down, even if Bhargava gets to give a speech about this. The contribution of women scientists in the Covid endeavour is a fact that needed to be underlined, as we celebrate the feat of their ISRO counterparts, and the film does that.

Bharat Biotech then has cause to feel peeved, getting barely a mention despite its significant contribution to the development and rollout of Covaxin, once the NIV had done the kick-off.

Yes, as per Bhargava’s book, Abraham did describe SARS-CoV2 as “majestic” when she first saw it under a microscope, for the crown on its surface – a moment recreated in the film.

Which means there is really only one unequivocal villain in The Vaccine War, and one that is common to Agnihotri’s worldview: the media, or specifically a journalist, who works for ‘The Daily Wire’ and is called Rohini Singh Dhulia. She won’t stop at anything, from conspiring with “big pharma”, to selling pictures of the dead and dying at a price, to deploying a “toolkit” shared by her “foreign” financiers, to show “the government” in a poor light.

If Bhargava loves his Indian basics, Dhulia only eats “vegan”, a fact inserted for really no reason.

The unnamed Prime Minister pops up only once, to be described by his Cabinet Secretary (Kher) as a man who wants results, does not believe in jargon, and trusts in science. Bhargava and his team exclaim that it’s the first time someone is backing them.

The message that is driven home is that one must differentiate between the government and the country, “that one might hate the government, but never India”.

The mention of Sanatan pops up, as does of Macaulay. Before the credits roll, journalists such as Dhulia are equated to terrorists – “who hit and scoot”.

The Vaccine War movie director: Vivek Agnihotri
The Vaccine War movie cast: Nana Patekar, Pallavi Joshi, Nivedita Bhattacharya, Girija Oak, Raima Sen, Sapthami Gowda, Anupam Kher
The Vaccine War movie rating: 2.5 stars