This Indira Gandhi biopic is a drab history lesson

After a long tussle with the Censor Board, Kangana Ranaut’s Indira Gandhi biopic Emergency finally sees the light of day. Coming from a BJP MP, it is a sincere yet inept attempt to humanise the former prime minister. The flaws of the film aren’t ideological but technical.

As the director and lead actor, Kangana tries to unfold the complexities of a towering figure in Indian political history, but what she lacks are skill and dexterity. There is vision but not the lens to capture it.

The film is a mishmash of ideas and events strung together, resulting in a disjointed narrative. It proceeds linearly, going over the life of Mrs Gandhi as if marking bullet points, never stopping to ponder. Thankfully, Emergency isn’t trying to rewrite history, but it also isn’t anything more than a retread of history.

We meet Indira Gandhi as a child playing in the gardens of her family home, Anand Bhawan. A rose stem pricks her finger and a drop of blood forms. It seems like a smart idea on paper. This foreshadows how Indira will eventually be hurt by her father, the country’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

A rose always adorned his breast pocket. But Kangana, as a director, overdoes it as the young Indu sees her reflection in the blood drop. We are told about but not amply shown Mrs Gandhi’s tumultuous childhood. There is a brief scene of her mother being kept away because she had tuberculosis. Mrs Gandhi’s character build-up is too random, too sudden, too direct.