Emergency Review | Creating the Illusion of a Glorifying Biopic by Focusing Solely on the Flaws

Emergency was indeed a dark chapter in the history of democratic India, which even the Congress Party members have admitted as a mistake later. The new movie starring Kangana Ranaut, produced and directed by Ranaut herself, Emergency, on paper looks like a great opportunity to present a grey-shaded iconic political leader. Even if you assume it to be a propaganda film, it was an interesting choice as they can clearly conceal their intentions since they are empathizing with the leading character. But Kangana Ranaut’s storytelling here doesn’t want to have that smartness. Emergency is one of those weird films where they are worshipping the main character by picking all the flaws in their career and life.

The movie is basically the biopic of the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. We get to see events from her childhood. We get to see that as a kid, she was living in a house that had all the issues. As she grew up, her equation with her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, also went through a rough patch. The primary focus of the movie is the Emergency chapter. What led to that situation and how the aftermath of that event changed the political life of Indira Gandhi is what we see in Emergency.

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From a production quality aspect, I would say this one is perhaps the most well-mounted propaganda film. If you are totally ignorant about history, there is a good possibility that you will buy everything in this movie as a generically executed true story. Based on a story written by Kangana, the movie’s screenplay and dialogues are written by Ritesh Shah. Ritesh Shah is perhaps the only writer in Hindi cinema who kind of knows how to crack a balance between the mainstream filmy dialogues and the realistic ones. The sophisticated outer shell of the film Emergency is formed by the dialogues written by Ritesh Shah.

It is actually the selection of events that makes this movie a creation with specific intentions. I have heard about Indira Gandhi and the kind of aura she had from my parents. They have told me about events where people would wait for hours just to see a glimpse of her. But the Indira we see in this Kangana Ranaut movie is a fragile woman who has no clarity. Every decision of hers is shown as the result of someone instigating her. The Iron Lady of India was shown as this extremely weak individual who had this helpless look almost every time on her face. The film has this way of showing the Nehru family as this shortsighted, self-oriented bunch of people. I do agree with the fact that it is a subjective thing, but slapping that idea on the face of the audience by making them caricatures is definitely not good filmmaking. The revolution led by Jayaprakash Narayan, which was a major reason for the emergency and the downfall of Mrs. Gandhi’s government, had one important name who convinced JP to bounce back from his political sabbatical and lead the movement; Lalu Prasad Yadav. For some reason, Kangana’s history had only Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, and George Fernandes as the supporters of Mr. Narayan.

Coming to the performances, Kangana Ranaut, who has portrayed the role of the former PM, is somewhat making a mockery of the leader through her rendition. The writing has already done damage by choosing only the vulnerable bits of the individual, and by overtly moving the chin muscles and by doing voice mimicking, this Forrest Gump-ish portrayal of Indira Gandhi was doing injustice to the authenticity they achieved in terms of looks through prosthetic makeup and hairstyle. Anupam Kher, as Jayaprakash Narayan, keeps the energy low and delivers a convincing performance as Kranti seeker. Shreyas Talpade was slightly over dramatic in being Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Another major performer in the cast was Vishak Nair, who performed the part of Mrs. Gandhi’s younger son, Sanjay Gandhi. The performance was unbearably exaggerated, but I wouldn’t really blame Vishak, as the film’s intention was to make Sanjay Gandhi look like a psychopath who ran the country.

There was this jarring moment in the film when it suddenly became a musical inside the Indian Parliament when Indira Gandhi announced that we were at war. Vajpayee starts to sing, Indira joins him, and as the story progresses, we can even see Milind Soman’s Sam Manekshaw joining the band. I mean, for a second, I was reminded of the portions in the first Captain America movie where Steve Rogers was only roaming around to motivate soldiers. Emergency is just another perception-building exercise that sort of criticizes the central character in a way that people might feel they are praising her.

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Final Thoughts

Emergency is just another perception-building exercise that sort of criticizes the central character in a way that people might feel they are praising her.

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By Aswin Bharadwaj

Founder and editor of Lensmen Reviews.