The Accidental Prime Minister, which hits some 1,800 screens across India on January 11, has been making headlines since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unofficially endorsed the film by sharing the trailer on the party’s Twitter handle. But long before that, the casting of Anupam Kher as Manmohan Singh, prime minister during the UPA regime (2004-2014), raised eyebrows, given Kher’s support for the BJP and the background of the film’s director, Vijay Gutte. Gutte’s father, Ratnakar Gutte, contested and lost the 2014 Maharashtra assembly election as a member of the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, part of the BJP-led alliance in the state. Based on Sanjaya Baru’s eponymous book about his years as media advisor to Singh when he was PM, the film is being promoted with a disclaimer: the characters have been fictionalised for dramatisation. In an e-mail interview, Kher spoke with India Today about how he approached the role. Edited excerpts:
Q. How hard was it to play Manmohan Singh?
Playing Dr Manmohan Singh has been the most difficult role in my career to date as I’m portraying a person who’s still very well known and active in politics, someone who has a quality of not being typical and yet
being typical. I had to work for two months to bring out the quality of the thin voice he has. There was a dangerous possibility of it turning into a caricature. So I needed to imbibe and internalise it. For four months, I watched hours and hours of his footage. I couldn’t depend on my acting capabilities alone.
Q. After finishing the film, you said history will not misjudge him (Singh). Can you elaborate?
The line history will not misjudge has been taken from the last interview he gave: I hope that history does not misjudge me from the media’s point of view. Because I lived and became the person, it was very natural for me to have that thought process and feel the change. I think he was very sincere and had a certain amount of dignity with which he conveyed his acceptance of the situation, about all the corruption that was rampant during his period. His 10 years in office weren’t the best, but it’s not possible for the term of any political leader to only have good times. You can make out that he’s not a typical leader, he’s a bureaucrat. A bureaucrat with a certain kind of principles. He’s not trained to be a politician and that’s what makes him a misfit.
Q. You’ve praised PM Narendra Modi for his hard work, honesty and vision. How do you see the two leaders?
I’m a supporter of Narendra Modi-ji because I think he thinks about India, about positive changes. He’s a doer. I met him while I was showing my film A Wednesday and he was the (Gujarat) chief minister in his 10th year. The moment you reached Ahmedabad, you could see the work he had done. You know his intentions are well. I have rarely come across a leader who cares so much about the country; you can’t fake that for years. Dr Singh wasn’t a leader who was raised as a politician. Of course, I’m sure he too thinks about India’s good and has brought in some reforms, but I consider him as a weaker leader or maybe a leader who was not given freedom with regards to his position. My only issue with him was that, with so much happening around him during those 10 years, he should’ve taken a stand.
Q. Your wife has proved herself to be an adept politician. Is contesting an election on cards for you in the near future?
Yes, Kirron has completely shifted to Chandigarh and I am really very proud of the work she is doing. People say film-wallas do not make good politicians, but I think a politician’s job is to work for the people and Kirron is doing a fantastic job. It’s not me but people from Chandigarh who are saying this. I am not interested in joining politics. I will talk about my country, about what bothers me. I don’t have the time or inclination towards joining politics. They say never say no, but I have no intentions in the coming few years. If I join politics after, say, seven-eight years or whenever, I don’t want anyone to say I had said I don’t want to join politics. There are so many things we say we won’t do, but growing up is about understanding life. And when you grow up, you discover that may be your earlier interpretation was not quite correct. But right now, I have no time to get into politics.n
with Suhani Singh
Vicky Kaushal was prolificand outstandingin 2018. He charmed viewers in Netflix’s first Indian rom-com, Love Per Square Foot, and its anthology of short films, Lust Stories. He delivered a quiet, potent performance in Raazi and matched Ranbir Kapoor in Sanju, both box-office hits. And he capped off the year with an acclaimed turn as the best worst boyfriend in Manmarziyaan.
For Kaushal, the surreal year has still not sunk in. I am glad to have earned the confidence of filmmakers I have dreamt of working with, he says. As an entertainer, you always want to reach out to a wider audience, and this year I was fortunate to be a part of such films. It has motivated me to keep pushing my boundaries. The recent announcement that he will play the infamous Mughal ruler Aurangzeb in Takht, director Karan Johar’s ensemble drama slated to release in 2020, is further proof that Kaushal has arrived.
Will his first film of 2019 also be his first misstep? Uri: The Surgical Strike (set to release on January 11) is an action thriller. But the trailer has already drawn flak on social media for its anti-Pakistan jingoism.
Kaushal welcomed the criticism, saying the job of a film is to start a discussion, though he’d like people to see the whole movie before making a final judgement. Kaushal plays Major Vihaan Shergill, and he plays him loud, the trailer suggests. They have to take it up a notch because he’s charging his troops to do the dirty job of going across the border and pulling the trigger because their duty demands them to do it, says Kaushal. He’s doing so because he wants them to come back alive.
Based on the cross-border surgical strike conducted on September 29, 2016, in response to the Uri terror attack that killed 19 soldiers, the film centres on the planning and execution of the mission. Since the army operation is fresh in everybody’s mind, one can’t be frivolous or take a lot of liberties, says Kaushal. Filmmaker Aditya Dhar adhered to defence protocol and fictionalised the names and backgrounds of the armymen involved, but he stuck to facts when it came to the operation itself.
Kaushal was shooting Raazi, in which he plays a demure husband and Pakistani army officer, when the script for Uri came his way. Still, he had a hard time convincing himself that he could portray the aura and persona of an army officer. It’s not just about yelling, he says. When you stand in front of 80 commandos and give orders, it should feel like
you are doing it. The confidence to do so can’t be achieved overnight.
Along with bootcamp training to bulk up, he used meditation techniques suggested by casting director Atul Mongia to get into his character. He told me the way I breathe is very different from an army guy and that I need to match the rhythm of one, says Kaushal. Setting aside 30-45 minutes daily for the exercise paid dividends. In a few days, I felt connected. I was looking, walking and talking differently, says the actor.
--Suhani Singh
HIT OR MISS?
OBITUARY
MRINAL SEN
1923-2018
FILMS WITHOUT FEAR
Mrinal Sen made his first film in 1955, the same year his contemporary Satyajit Ray made his illustrious debut. Pather Panchali made Ray an instant sensation. Overshadowed by other popular films, Sen’s Raat Bhore sank without a trace.
It took Sen until 1959 to make a second movie. Neel Akasher Neechey, about an immigrant Chinese peddler’s bond with a nationalist Bengali woman, was a hit, garnering praise from both Jawaharlal Nehru and the Communist Party. Though he later expressed embarrassment about its sentimentality, it launched a remarkable career. Between 1960 and 2002, Sen directed 25-odd features, films as various as the devastating Akaler Sandhane and the cheeky Bhuvan Shome. He handled adivasi colonial drama (Mrigayaa) as comfortably as Naxalite politics (the Calcutta Trilogy) or middle-class morality (Ek Din Pratidin). He was avidly political but toed no party line, and though inspired by literature, was more interested in the episodic form than in narrative.
Born in 1923 to a lawyer in Faridpur (now in Bangladesh), Sen moved to Calcutta in 1940 to attend Scottish Church College. His subject was physics, but politics and literature drew him more. Jobless, he discovered the Imperial (now National) Library, where he spent 10 hours a day for five years, teaching himself many things, including cinema. He engaged in the vibrant Marxist addas of the time, watched plays at the Indian People’s Theatre Association (meeting Ritwik Ghatak there), and became a regular at the Calcutta Film Society formed in 1947 by Ray and Chidananda Dasgupta, though he couldn’t afford the fee.
Sen’s career had a lifelong openness. New routes excited him more than the well-trodden path, even if this meant losing his way occasionally. Inspired by watching The 400 Blows in Bombay in 1965, for example, Sen adopted the French New Wave’s jump cut, voiceover, stills and freeze frames into his next film, Akash Kusumtriggering an infamous public spat with Ray. His politics could be fearlessly direct. He was thrilled with a German critic’s words about Calcutta 71: This is a film which is not afraid to be taken as a pamphlet. But he would never do it because it was expected of him. In later years, when asked why the dead servant boy’s father never slaps the callous, casteist employers in his masterful Kharij, Sen apparently said, He did. He slapped all of us. Didn’t you feel it?
We did, Mr Sen, we did. n
Trisha Gupta
WEB SERIES
GREAT
EXPECTATIONS
Mohan Kumar’s single aspiration is to see his sons Radha and Manju become the best batsmen in the world. The three leave their village for Mumbai with less than six months to go for Selection Daywhen three under-16 players will be awarded professional contracts. After some big-bad-city humbling, the boys win a scholarship to an alternative school that hopes its cricket team will turn the school’s fortunes around. And for this, legendary coach Tommy Sir is coaxed into returning to the school’s cricket ground. Eyeing the same ground for real estate is a failed businessman whose gaze then turns towards sponsoring players.
Netflix’s new series Selection Day races through its material cursorily and quicklythe first season is six episodes of around 20 minutes. The main characters tend towards being one-dimensional and emerge from insufficient social context. The minor characters are entirely one-dimensional: security guards are too ready to be bribed; the powerful are too keen to make the underdog the underdog; the bully is all mocking bully. Even Mumbai, so often a redeeming setting, feels listless here. And its particularly vibrant school-cricket bustle is shot mincingly, all tight frames and edits.
What makes Selection Day watchable are some of the performances. Mohammad Samad as Manju, the talented batsman who’d rather study science, is a joy on screen and admirably self-possessed (even in trying scenes, like the recurring gag in which an apparently fresh-from-gym Lord Subramanyam materialises next to Manju while he’s batting). Rajesh Tailang as Mohan is solid, veering deftly between monomaniacal and simply maniacal. Mahesh Manjrekar brings a kindly, comforting gravitas to the role of Tommy Sir.
Ultimately, Selection Day feels unsatisfying and insubstantial. So far, at least. A menacing undercurrent involving the boys’ missing mother remains unexplored. A tentative same-sex attraction is handled with such reticence that viewers might wonder if they’re imagining it. Both could turn out to be strong plotlines in the future. n
Srinath Perur
Q+A
Net Gain
Danish shuttler Viktor Axelsen on playing the Premier Badminton League, learning Mandarin and
his birthday plans
Q. This is your third year in the Premier Badminton League.
It’s an exciting league where the scoring system is a bit different. It’s really intense. Also, you are able to join different teams and meet new people.
Q. Does it improve your game?
Every game is good practice. You play in stadiums where the drift is pretty tricky, and we can run into that in regular tournaments.
Q. You’ll be in India on your birthday (Jan. 4). Any plans?
I don’t even know if I have a game that day. I don’t need any special celebration, just want to practise and play well.
Q. After winning the World Championships in 2017, you had a difficult 2018. What lessons have you learned?
Not to rush things. I got an ankle surgery in February. After winning the European Championships, my asthma started flaring up and I have had issues with my right ankle. I’m just coming back now.
Q. Apart from Danish and English, you speak Mandarin.
I realised early how big badminton is in China. I got myself a Chinese teacher and have been practising consistently. I got an insight into how the Chinese approach things and practise.
Q. Any plans to learn Hindi?
Not really. For now, I can only say Achchha Achchha’.