Emergency

Emergency Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Mahima Chaudhary, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman & others

Director: Kangana Ranaut

What’s Good: No political vested interest but a balanced yet incisive look at India’s most controversial prime minister.

What’s Bad: An episodic feeling in parts.

Loo Break: Certainly not!

Watch or Not?: Yes, it is edu-tainment for all.

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 148 Minutes

User Rating:

Though the film is titled Emergency, based on the darkest chapter in Free India and the biggest and mammoth blunder done by Indira Gandhi, it is no less than a biopic (that genre which flopped right and left last year!) as it details her life from childhood till her death, seven years after she lifted the emergency.

Surprisingly for Kangana Ranaut, an actor-director whose political ideology and party affiliations are polar opposites to Indira Gandhi, this film is a balanced look at the controversial enigma the political figure was.

Emergency Movie Review: Script Analysis

Kangana Ranaut has developed a story from Indira Gandhi’s life, covering key episodes in the latter’s career and scriptwriters Ritesh Shah and Tanvi Kesari Pasumarthy weaved this into a gripping narrative that is episodic but mostly does not seem so (like Sam Bahadur, Main Atal Hoon, and some others) because of the clever way the content is amalgamated. The director has decided not to present Indira Gandhi as the megalomaniac individual she had become in the mid-1970s.

Even at the risk of making the film seen like a sycophant’s interpretation, it analyses the reasons why the late prime minister became what she was and why a craving for power led to her doing whatever wrongs she did, and how she could not control her own despotic son, Sanjay, from his ego-driven and power-crazy excesses like the forced sterilization movement, based, as per this film, on a casual remark by his friend that we Indians breed like flies.

There are rare flashes of satire and humor, and we have even US President Nixon voicing his opinion on Indian women in general that, if authentically researched, is nothing less than a poor reflection of his tastes! We also have the barbs aimed at Indira by Jagjivan Ram, her erstwhile colleague, when the Janata regime took over in 1977, but for me, the sequence where she comes out of jail and meets Jayaprakash Narayan, her staunchest opponent, stands out.

The affectionate and patriotic but never power-hungry visionary who once called her “Gudiya (doll)” in her childhood again addresses her by that name. The script does take a few liberties, but they are judiciously done. Again, if the initial scene where she tells Atal Bihari Vajpayee that she can see him as a future prime minister has happened in real life, then it is excellently done. But if that is fictitious, it is indeed ingenious!

A point is made that Indira spearheaded the first Pokhran test in May 1974. Her face-off with Nixon is depicted well, but the script shies off her controversial role in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death and the subsequent investigation into it, as revealed later in another authentic film on real events, The Tashkent Files (2019). The script also does not touch on the recorded fact (in close friend and biographer Pupul Jayakar’s book) that Indira had a premonition of her death. Instead, a scene between her ever-loyal secretary, R.K. Dhawan, shows her stating that she did not want her Sikh bodyguards removed (“because they too are Indians”) after Operation Blue Star, which earned her the ire of that community.

And while the ban on Kishore Kumar finds token mention, we see the inglorious Indian Express chapter also shirked over, though the clamping down on the freedom of the press is mentioned in detail. The script finally emerges as a more than simplistic look at Indira’s psychology all along, and all in all, this is one of screen fiction writer Ritesh Shah’s (Namastey London, Raid, Maidaan, Dahaad) better works.

Emergency Movie Review: Star Performance

Kangana Ranaut shoulders a mammoth responsibility to etch out a very human and, in many ways, vulnerable woman whose exterior was tougher than the proverbial nails. And her performance is amazingly fluid, magnetic, and seamless. At no point does she falter or go off-kilter: it’s no less than a tour de force and a histrionic triumph. Under the circumstances, it may perhaps be politically incorrect to state this, but she could be one of the strong contenders for the National Award yet again!

Anupam Kher as JP is restrained and mature, and the late Satish Kaushik fits Jagjivan Ram’s whimsical character like a glove. Milind Soman brings out the aggressive patriot in Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw very well, and Shreyas Talpade is excellent as the ardent Vajpayee. Darshan Pandya scores high as R.K. Dhawan, Indira’s loyal personal secretary and ‘doorkeeper.’ Mahima Chaudhari is strictly all right as Pupul Jayakar. The rest of the actors do what is needed.