In director Omung Kumar’s PM Narendra Modi, Vivek Oberoi handles the principal role with a certain amount of flair and decency. His eyes speak more than a thousand words.
Lamentably this is a film that believes in the power of verbal lamp-posts. Every self-glorifying thought that this celluloid holographic Modi feels must have a verbal counterpoint. Every rhetoric and retort, every aphorism that our prime minister has uttered or not uttered (the line between fact and fiction in this bio-pic is non-existent) is given the status of a large hoarding.
In one sequence, he communicates on metaphysical ideas with his spiritual guru (played by Suresh Oberoi) which ends with the Guru declaring his shishya ready for politics.
For a brief interlude I thought I was watching Karate Kid.
Tragically, Oberoi is in awe of the character he plays, thereby robbing even the genuine moments, like those shared with his mother (a severely under-utilized and over-wigged Zarina Wahab) of their shine.
What shines through is the resilience of a filmmaker—far more intense than anything that PM Modi has ever attempted in his political career—to venerate the subject of the ostensible bio-pic. In most of the scenes, Oberoi’s NM talks. Everyone listens approvingly. Even Amit Shah (Manoj Joshi) whose camaraderie with PM Modi is described as Jai-Veru dosti from Sholay, is no more than a sounding-board for the protagonist.
The less shadowy figures are those who play negative parts, like the conniving corrupt businessman (Prashanth Narayan) who controls an even more corrupt media person (Darshan Kumaar) and manipulates monstrous lies about Modiji’s intentions.
It’s always the media to blame for the negative stories about statesmen who are dedicated to building a nation. While the world conspires his downfall Modiji stands smiling with a picture of Sardar Patel in the background.
You get the picture?
On the plus side, the film is shot with a reasonable amount of efficiency. The narration from the protagonist’s childhood to his coronation as the prime minister moves a brisk, though pre-ordained pace. The climax at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan where Modiji was saved from a terror attack, gets it all wrong. But that is only to be expected in a film which isn’t overly concerned about facts as long as the central figure comes across as a flag-waving nationalist who cares only for the welfare of his country.
No one is bothered with the facts. Least of all the audience. When the film released six years ago there were loud cheers and applause in the theater each time Vivek Oberoi made a Modi-inspired speech. And the celluloid Manmohan Singh, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi were booed and hissed.
A very thin line divides passion from propaganda. Films about figures we admire, specially the living ones, tend to lose their focus and blur the lines of objectivity as the maker is emotionally too close to the subject to give us a comprehensive picture of both the glory and flaws that constitute greatness.
To expect any kind of blemish in character to emerge in this biopic would be unrealistic. However, director Umesh Shukla and his writers Mihir Bhuta and Radhika Anand have attempted to give us a comprehensive, sincere and factual view of a life remarkably rich and mottled. This adherence to the straight and narrow path tends to make the narrative somewhat sluggish and tedious.
