1969 was the year Indira Gandhi came onto her own in congress quashing the efforts of the 'Syndicate', the older guard that had put her in power with dreams of manipulating her from behind the scenes. Her success in showing them to be inept political strategists ended with Indira marginalising them and concentrating power in her personality, ably assisted by a close circle of advisers and bureaucrats. With smashing success in 1971 with the formation of Bangladesh, she pursued that goal relentlessly with progressively cynical power grabs. That pursuit ended with the promulgation of emergency and successfull curtailment of basic rights and habeas corpus of indian citizens. As emergency proceeded on its cruel path, Indira relied more on Sanjay, her elder son for advice and strategy. As is the case usually in india with free loading sons of politicians, Sanjay got drunk on power and brought dictatorial policies to fruition under the benign hand of her mother.
This movie deals with the period from 1969 - 1976 through the trials and tribulations of 3 characters in the movie Siddharth(KayKay Menon), Vikram(Shiny Ahuja) and Gita(Chitrangada Singh). Each character has different ideals and respond differently to the changing political landscape. Siddharth is the faux revolutionary enabled by a cushy living provided for by his father, a retired judge all the while looking for an ideology to hang his hat on. He blames his father for having compromised socialist ideologies to get ahead and goes around crashing rock-n-roll parties(the characters study in Stephens College in Delhi) with exhortations to think of the masses and paying homage to the idols of indian communists, Mao and Che. Vikram is the opposite, son of a father who is a congress worker following gandhian and socialist ideals(which is emphasized throughout the movie till we are screaming for the director to stop), who has seen what the prevailing ideology has wrought in his family and focusses on getting rich any which way he can. Gita is a transplant from England who is in love with Siddharth for his professed ideals and anguished cries at not being able to achieve egalitarian paradise in India.
The movie starts with homage to Naxalbari movement with its red salute and Siddharth's almost religious fervour at being on the frontlines. As time goes on and the political class becomes more opportunistic(from the austere and sacrificing earlier generation), Vikram's stock zooms while Siddharth stumbles confused looking for direction. He finds it in agitating for rights of lower caste people in Bhojpur in Bihar(even though the voice over slips and refers to Bhagalpur, unconsciously referring to the place of hindu muslim carnage in mid 80s). Vikram develops his contacts and becomes a successful businessmen adept at playing every side of politics. The one constant is Siddharth's love for Gita and Vikram's unrequited pining for her. Gita gets married to a finance ministry bureaucrat all the while carrying on a solid affair with Siddharth, trying to help him find his footing in his search for utopia. She gets an attack of conscience and decides to ditch the bureaucrat for Siddharth even at the cost of throwing away the posh life of a delhi socialite for the sorry life of a bhojpur social worker. This is when the movie goes into reverential mode of following the social workers as they fight to get rights for lower castes, oppressed by the upper castes and the government machinery. As Siddharth and Gita burnish their socialist credentials, Vikram gets enmeshed in the power structure that is portrayed as the oppressor in the movie.
As emergency is promulgated, the assumptions of Vikram get a severe jolt and he finds his father jailed with no recourse to prevent it. Gita and Siddharth get into trouble and Vikram steps into rescue them. Siddharth's father pulls strings and gets him out while Vikram realises the folly of having a socialist gandhian father during emergency. He gets caught on the wrong end of the law and pays severely for it.
In the end, Siddharth realises he isnt upto the hard life of a life long revolutionary and goes overseas. Gita stays back in the village tending to Vikram.
The movie is aimed at the set of people who are interested in politics in India but are removed by language barriers and urban sensitivity to take part in it. However, the entire movie is in English with some local dialects thrown in when the action shifts to rural scenery. It would have been more powerful had it been in local languages with some English thrown in. The way the characters talk, it is very difficult to identify with their angst or their difficulties when they chose to do stupid things. With my bias for tamil movies, I couldnt help comparing the storyline to Palaivana rojakkal(about the repression of press freedom) and Iruvar(especially the scene when proxies for MGR and Karunanidhi's characters debate over the future direction of public policy. Growing up poor, MGR wants government to provide food while Karunanidhi, being the son of a tamil teacher, wants to improve tamil language. The proxy for MGR's character suggests the lack of problem with food while growing up, allowed proxy for Karunanidhi's character to dream of language and other stuff). Iruvar made the point far more eloquently and moved on.
This movie does start with references to Naxalbari and moves onto Indira announcing emergency across the country. It then moves on the dreaded Sanjay period when people are dragged into forced sterilisation camps and the full power of the state is on display. Towards the end, the movie gives up the pretense of addressing political issues and focuses only on the characters themselves.
Coming to the acting, both the male actors did very well with Shiny Ahuja completely upstaging everyone else but that could be because of the depth of his character. KayKay Menon tries but most of the time comes across as a wimp than a firebrand revolutionary. Chitrangada is the worst of them all. She is pretty and uses expressions well sometimes but falls short big time when the scenes become heavy.
The movie could have been made into a serial but as a movie, it falls short of being passable. It can be classified as an attempt but there is so much pretention in it that it is hard to take it seriously even though there is a dearth of good political movies in India.
