Cast: Kirti Kulhari, Tota Roy Chowdhury, Anupam Kher, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Supriya Vinod
Director: Madhur Bhandarkar
Rating: 1.5 Stars (out of 5)
In line with Bollywood's known aversion to hot-button political themes, Mumbai filmmakers have rarely tackled the Emergency and its repercussions. To that extent, Madhur Bhandarkar's Indu Sarkar may seem to be filling a gap despite coming at a time when the circumstances are just right for taking jabs at the mother and son duo who nearly ran our democracy around 40 years ago. But beyond that, it is a vapid, half-baked, mawkish political potboiler that comes nowhere near doing justice to that dark phase of Indian contemporary history that is better off not forgotten lest it is repeated.
Indu Sarkar Movie Review: Supriya Vinod in a film still
Lack of genuine creative acuity and a cavalier attitude to period details are the film's biggest drawbacks. The former glitch derails, among other things, the characterization of the then Prime Minister's son (played pretty competently by Neil Nitin Mukesh but to no avail), who emerged as an extra-constitutional authority calling the shots in Delhi during the 21 months that the nation was under Emergency.
Indu Sarkar Movie Review: Kirti Kulhari in a film still
The abrasive, dreaded figure modelled on Sanjay Gandhi - simply called Chief by members of his cowering coterie - is more as a conventional Hindi movie baddie than a believable, flesh-and-blood politician who thought nothing of bending constitutional norms to ensure that his writ ran untrammeled under his mother's 'rule by decree'.
Indu Sarkar Movie Review: Neil Nitin Mukesh in a film still
Indu Sarkar activates all the right narrative levers - the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, the forced sterilization drive, the Turkman Gate demolitions, the clampdown on press freedom and the hounding of pro-democracy activists - with due enthusiasm, but isn't able for the briefest of moments to come out of its shrill melodramatic mould. It also alludes more than once to Indira Gandhi's 20-point programme and her son's 5-point programme but fails to deliver anything intelligent or insightful vis-a-vis those grand plans.
If a stuttering female lead is a metaphor for suppressed voices, it really isn't a particularly effective one. "Jab sab chup hain, koi toh chikhega (When everyone is silent, somebody has to scream)," she says in a courtroom scene. Sure, sure! The lady - she's grown up in an orphanage and writes poetry to express herself - goes from being a diffident individual overly conscious of her speech impairment to turning into a firebrand fighter with a cause. The transformation is rather too facile.
Indu Sarkar Movie Review: Tota Roy Chowdhury and Kirti Kulhari in a film still
The screenplay starts off with having us believe that the heroine's deficiency is a 'bimari' that she simply has to rid herself of. "Bolne mein khot hain (My speech has an infirmity)," she says. Someone promptly asks her: "Kabse hai yeh bimari (Since when have you had this disease?)" That isn't all. In her first conversation with her would-be hubby, she admits: "Main bas ek achchi biwi banna chahti hoon... aur koi khaas sapna nahin hai mera (My only dream is to be a good wife)." That is fertile ground for the making of a doormat. When Indu eventually walks out on her husband, the latter mocks her: "Haklaate haklaate haq maangne chali."
The men here are an emasculated lot. Besides the section officer who serves his political and bureaucratic masters without asking questions, there is an urban development minister who grovels before the Chief like an errant schoolboy and a Jagdish Tytler lookalike who just hangs around uttering nary a word. One of the characters appears to be Rukhsana Sultana, who spearheaded Sanjay Gandhi's family planning drive in Old Delhi). She is in a few frames and even gets a line or two in edgewise. Otherwise, like so much else in the film, she is no more than an insignificant part of the backdrop.
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