Historical Movies Are Just Bollywood’s Surgical Strike On Truth And Facts

Filming the biography of a person, dead or alive, or for that matter a hoary event—factual or apocryphal—is like walking on a double-edged sword, especially in a country where sentiments get hurt even by the theatre of the absurd. Swords come out of their sheaths not only over the portrayal of characters but also something as innocuous as a movie title. More often than not, filmmakers have to pay the price for their ‘audacity to distort facts’ on commercial excuses.

Yet, the intrepid Bollywood brigade does not seem to shy away from making biopics, what with its privilege of cinematic liberty to pass off facts as fiction and vice-versa, without being questioned. In fact, the Lords of Lokhandwala tend to use this very freedom to temper any script with the sugar or the spice of their choice to whet the curiosity of a gullible audience. Little surprise then, there is seldom an honest cinematic adaptation of the life and times of a person or a landmark event recorded on the footnotes of history. Obviously, the facts have not been sacrosanct in a Bollywood biopic where the main protagonist is often depicted as infallible with his dark side airbrushed with impunity. Unlike the heroes of Shakespearean tragedies, such characters do not possess any hamartia that could cause their downfall.

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This may be acceptable for a run-of-the-mill masala film, but in a biopic supposed to be based on true events, it seems well-nigh unpardonable. But then, Bollywood has had its own rules and regulations over the years. It is probably the only industry in the 70mm universe where posters claim a film to be “inspired by true events”, but also feature a disclaimer alongside that all characters and events depicted in it are fictional and any resemblance to any living or dead person is merely coincidental! Evidently, it is never averse to luring the audience to the ticket counters by flashing the biopic card but wastes no time to enunciate that everything shown onscreen is imaginary, if any unwarranted controversy arises out of its misadventure.

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It is strange that almost all biopics turn out to be controversial for one reason or the other, regardless of all the tricks and subterfuges adopted by the wily movie merchants, be it a historical love story such as Bajirao-Mastani (2015) or a contemporary odyssey of Gunjan Saxena (2020), the first woman fighter pilot of the Indian Air Force (IAF). Sometimes, it also seems obvious that the filmmakers themselves deliberately fuel controversies as an effective ploy to lure audiences. Occasionally, such controversies help a weak film at the box office but do not necessarily provide an elixir to a badly made biopic. That is what happened to the recently released Akshay Kumar’s much-awaited film, Prithviraj (the title was changed last minute to Samrat Prithviraj). Originally billed as a biopic of Prithviraj Chouhan, the gallant Hindu emperor of the 12th century, it was declared tax-free by many BJP-ruled states. Still the largesse could not save it from being an all-time disaster. Apart from its poor screenplay, direction and publicity strategy, the film provoked history buffs enough to brush aside its claims of being a well-researched biopic. In the past too, such allegations have been leveled against high-profile films like Padmaavat (2018), Sanju (2018) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022). It was, however, Vivek Agnihotri’s blockbuster The Kashmir Files (2022), based on the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, that caused the biggest storm in recent times amid the raging facts-versus-fiction debate.

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There is no denying that several films and web series have turned a blind eye to facts despite their promotion as being inspired by true events. For example, a web series, Maharani, was widely publicised as Rabri Devi’s biopic on the former Bihar chief minister played by Huma Qureshi. Yet, the sequence of events in the series was distorted enough to make it appear fictional. In such series or movies, the lines between real and reel get so blurred that one begins to wonder whether it is a case of the art imitating life or the other way round. It was a textbook example of Bollywood’s ingenuity to blatantly steal episodes from real life, tweak them in the name of cinematic licence, and present them with an unapologetic disclaimer that it is purely a work of fiction.

Same case with many Bollywood war movies as well. Barring Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat (1964), it has never shed its obsession with masala and melodrama to make films such as J.P. Dutta’s Border (1997) on the Battle of Longewala in the 1971 war; Aditya Dhar’s Uri: The Surgical Strike (2018), about India’s 2016 surgical strike on terror camps in Pakistan; Shershaah (2021), a biopic of the Kargil war hero Vikram Batra; or Bhuj: The Pride of India (2021) on the heroics of an IAF pilot, Squadron leader Vijay Karnik, in the 1971 Indo-Pak war.

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The main problem with Bollywood’s war movies is that its screenwriters take far too many liberties for the onscreen adaptation of real events, with an eye on commercial prospects. That is why the IAF objected to a few scenes in the Jahnvi Kapoor-starrer Gunjan Saxena. Such instances have not dissuaded Bollywood as yet. As of now, several war biopics are being made, including one starring Vicky Kaushal on Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, the hero of the Bangladesh war.

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The moot point, however, remains as to whether historical facts can be ruthlessly tweaked in the name of cinematic freedom for a film shouted about from the rooftops for being a biopic? The jury is still out but some filmmakers see no harm in doing so. According to them, the textbooks taught at a school or university cannot be literally adapted into a feature film, and changes have to be made in the script due to commercial or artistic compulsions. For example, would Yash Raj Films’ Samrat Prithviraj have gotten more viewers had it depicted the killing of the ‘last Hindu emperor’ at the hands of a foreign invader such as Muhammad Ghori, unlike the diametrically opposite way shown in the movie?

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They have a point. The grammar of feature films is vastly different from that of documentaries. Of course, any filmmaker cannot be divested of his fundamental cinematic freedom. But do they have the right to present falsehoods under the guise of truth? Just as every cigarette packet has a statutory warning, should the censor board ensure a disclaimer that the scenes shown on screen in a film purported to be a biopic are anything but a true mirror of history?

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(This appeared in the print edition as "Packaging of Fiction as Facts")

(The writer is a National award winner for Best Critic on cinema)