The Accidental Prime Minister
The General Elections of May 2004 – advanced by six months – were largely expected to be swept by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA, who had been in power for six years. Mounted on the “India Shining” campaign and Vajpayee’s popularity, it was almost a no-brainer that India’s first non-Congress Prime Minister to serve a full term in office would be invited yet again to form the government. Which Indian in their right mind would vote a party led by a woman of Italian origin to Raisina? Well, as it turned out, quite a few. Sonia Gandhi – wary of the image purported of her by her opponents and the more dynamic, powerful leaders within the Congress-led UPA – opted to nominate as Prime Minister the man who transformed the financial affairs of India: economist and former Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.
For those of you who may have been worried about the film being a work of propaganda, worry not, for it isn’t one. No, sir, it isn’t the BJP’s pre-election campaign video. It’s something worse. A shambolically-made parody that qualifies more as a series of sketches than as a film.
The Accidental Prime Minister opens with the Congress-led UPA victory in the 2004 General Elections. For a couple of minutes, we see party bigwigs like Pranab Mukherjee, Shivraj Patil, Natwar Singh and Ahmed Patel discussing who gets the top job after Sonia Gandhi publicly gives up her claim to the seat. A fight between senior Congressmen is averted when Sonia chooses Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Leader of the Congress party in the Rajya Sabha.
Moments later, Anupam Kher turns up, having “transformed” into the character. We have barely been introduced to him (he is constantly returning Namastes in the Rashtrapati Bhavan) that the film’s narrator pops up – Akshaye Khanna as Sanjaya Baru. Thus begins a pointless one hour and forty-something minute-long film that ends up nowhere.
Director Vijay Gutte’s wish to delve into the anecdotal nature of the source material is an undoing the narrative never recovers from, and Khanna’s “breaking the fourth wall” becomes so tiring that you expect him to do it even when he doesn’t. Hindi films have used the technique in the past, and not done too badly; Gutte’s film is clearly not one of those.
In a bid to portray all the characters that made up Dr. Manmohan Singh’s PMO, we meet far too many inconsequential people. There are interesting incidents that induced a chuckle when you read the book but are absolutely banal in the film.
The PMO is decked up in lurid wallpapers and furniture that clearly belongs in the English manor house where the movie was apparently filmed. It looks ridiculous and over-the-top. What is even weirder is the costuming for Baru, who is dressed in a variety of suits and combinations, each more horrifying than the other.
The film looks and feels quite flat, with most of the backgrounds having clearly been composited in post-production. The background score is relentless, often screeching over the words of the characters. The tunes though are in sync with the film – they are just as hilarious as the events unfolding on screen.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the editing is a total hackjob (the whole film is, but the editing contributes to that greatly). Scenes are stitched together incoherently and lack any kind of bond. In fact, one often thinks it’s a bunch of comedy spoofs that have been assembled into a feature film.
Usually, when a film is this bad in so many departments, one looks to the actors to rescue it. No such respite here. The supporting cast is largely inconsequential and has little to do, though I liked how Arjun Mathur further dumbed down Rahul Gandhi (never thought that was possible). Vipin Sharma is the only one to leave with his reputation untarnished, playing the scheming Ahmed Patel (Congress’ troubleshooter and Sonia’s right-hand man) as slimily as is possible. Actors of the calibre of Shiv Subramaniam, Divya Seth Shah, Prakash Belawadi, Atul Kumar and Aahana Kumra have shockingly little to do, and filmmaker Hansal Mehta (the film’s creative producer) shows up as Naveen Patnaik in a ridiculously staged scene.
Akshaye Khanna – always a dependable asset, even in a film like Dishoom – plays Sanjaya Baru as this smug, vain journalist who is smart as a tick and always right on the money. For a performance that starts out interestingly, it unravels pretty fast into a bland one, though watching Khanna parade around in his ridiculous costumes, smoking cigars (and looking mighty mad while doing it) adds comic value to the film.
Anupam Kher is possibly the worst thing about this amateurish misadventure of a film. Kher turns Dr. Manmohan Singh into a man who walks like a robot (though that might be the filmmaker’s way of adding nuance to the character) and talks like Sachin Tendulkar. Kher is unable to delve into the Doctor’s mind and deliver a refined performance. There is no question about it – this is a caricature, and a rather badly done one too. Never do we see Manmohan the technocrat, the man who transformed the Indian economy, nor do we get to see the Prime Minister who cracked the Nuclear Deal with the US and the one who made serious attempts to carry forward Vajpayee’s Kashmir thrusts. This has to be among the worst portrayals of a real person in Hindi cinema, though Dr. Manmohan Singh can derive pleasure from the fact that Vivek Oberoi will soon be playing Modi in a film.
Four writers have been credited for the screenplay, and yet none of them seemed to have been able to turn it into a coherent, compelling story. The film is haphazardly sketched out, with scenes that aren’t in the book (even though Gutte claims to have stuck to the book) and tepid drama that would put you to sleep if it weren’t for the background music.
If the hope Vijay Gutte had of The Accidental Prime Minister was that it would pave the way for more films on politics in Hindi, he has hit the nail on the head because no other film can match the absolute preposterousness of this one. It’s truly an embarrassment of a film, one you don’t want to accept you’ve watched and one the people associated with it will want to run away from as soon as possible. If it were simply a bad film, an unengaging one, it wouldn’t be this bad, but this one is also badly made, so what praise can be showered upon it? Perhaps this – that it ended.
The Accidental Prime Minister is a film that was made by accident and one you should avoid watching if you value your sanity and factual records, neither of which the film caters to.
Cinephile Stock 