It is hard to believe that Kangana Ranaut has directed Emergency, the excellent biopic on the multifaceted little-understood India Gandhi, while playing her so skilfully on screen.
At first the whining voice tends to get in the way. But we soon get used to it—and at almost three hours , there is plenty of time for whatever emotional and other adjustments this canny biopic requires—and within fifteen minutes of playing time Ms Ranaut assumes the space that Mrs Gandhi occupied, with an impressive equipoise.
So overpowering is Ms Ranaut’s screen presence—the hurt, the pride, the anger, the egotism, the obstinacy, the vulnerability—that it is easy to overlook the sheer excellence of the presentation.
Emergency is not just another biopic thrown into the prolonged season of genre-orgying. It is a story that needed to be told, and is told with an assertive acumen that makes for an exceptional expedition into the mind and heart of a woman who rewrote the supposedly inviolable parliamentary rules.
The various well-known episodes from Mrs Gandhi’s life, from her father’s neglect to her son’s bullying, are swiftly, but honestly, projected into the watertight script which has no room for humbug, in keeping with the groundrules of the protagonist’s existence.
While the supporting cast playing the other politicians during Mrs G’s thirty-year rule are played competently,if not outstandingly, the relatively unknown Darshan Pandya excels as the Iron Lady’s right-hand man R K Dhawan, silently and sadly watching his kingpin become a puppet in the hands of her ego and son Sanjay, not necessarily in that order.
Some portions of this technically polished political drama are near-magical: Kangana as the imperious Mrs G climbing on an elephant to travel to Belchi, a village brutalized by communal carnage, her breakdown when she witnesses celebrations on the streets after her beloved son’s sudden death, her look of wounded pride when fellow-politician Jagjivan Ram (Satish Kaushik) taunts her about her electoral defeat….
This is a bio-pic with balls and wings. Gutsy and clear-headed, it soars and dips with the protagonist’s morale, giving the audience a curvy ,vivid often unforgettable glimpse into the life of a woman who never said die.
