There were only two things I asked of Emergency. One was to literally see the presses stop (we’re shown this twice). The second was for Sam Manekshaw to call Indira Gandhi ‘sweetie’, like Vicky Kaushal does in Sam Bahadur (2023). This, surprisingly, wasn’t fulfilled. I'm certain the makers were aware of the legend of the army chief saying this to the prime minister, but chose to leave it out. Its absence says a lot about this curious film suspended between opposing impulses.
Emergency isn’t what I was expecting. For starters, its focus isn’t the Emergency; the events of 1975-77 take up, at a rough estimate, half an hour in a 146-minute film. Instead, this is very much a Indira Gandhi biopic, progressing in linear fashion from her childhood to her assassination in 1984. Since it's Kangana Ranaut—a BJP MP who has made a number of incendiary statements about minorities and protestors—directing, producing and playing Indira, I was expecting a crazed hatchet job. This too doesn’t happen.
There’s been so much right-leaning, opposition-baiting and establishment-praising Hindi cinema in the last few years that you could create a shadow version of Emergency by editing together scenes from a dozen different historical films. We know the drill—Nehru was too weak to keep India intact, Congress was a nest of vipers, Sam was responsible for victory in Bangladesh. Emergency doesn’t deviate from this in its initial stretch. Indira is installed as prime minister, but with her nervous manner and fluttering speech, is derided by opponents and party members alike as ‘goongi gudiya’ (mute doll).
Through all this, the film remains sympathetic to Indira. She isn’t pitied the way Anupam Kher and the makers of The Accidental Prime Minister (2019) pitied Manmohan Singh. Ranaut does an extra-quavering voice from time to time, and blinks a lot when Indira is boxed in, like in her meeting with Nixon prior to the Bangladesh war. But she’s clearly attracted to Gandhi’s forcefulness. She paints her as a smart politician who took tough decisions, a patriot who had the misfortune of being part of a dynasty that was neither patriotic nor capable.
The film lurches unconvincingly through history, going from the victory in Bangladesh to Emergency in double quick time. The argument Ranaut and writer Ritesh Shah offer is that, post-1971, Indira lost her head to praise and power (it’s suggested this is a family trait—Motilal Nehru is shown teaching her about ‘satta’ and ‘shaasak’ as a child). A better film might have shown the deliberations between Indira and Sanjay Gandhi (Vishak Nair) and other confidantes leading up to the declaration. Emergency offers the simplistic vision of opposition leaders Jayaprakash Narayan (Anupam Kher) and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Shreyas Talpade) singing in protest on the streets and then continuing in jail after their arrest (not as silly as Indira, Sam and the parliament breaking into song in an earlier montage).
Though Sanjay is shown as the prime mover during Emergency, Indira’s self-image takes a beating—literally, as she starts seeing a zombie in the mirror. There is certainly room for a film (or, more likely, a streaming series) that looks with genuine curiosity at this period in Indian history. But Ranaut is not only content to roll out the hits—displacement of tenement dwellers, forced sterilisation—she doesn’t even seem to want this to be Indira’s legacy. A long redemption arc follows, in which Ranaut shows flashes of the actor she used to be (though the wail she lets out after Sanjay’s death prompted giggles in the theatre).
Despite some exploitation film violence, Emergency is a more polished effort than Ranaut’s debut as director, the shlocky historical Manikarnika (2019). It’s also less virulent than her last film, Tejas (2023), in which her fighter pilot prevents a terrorist attack on the Ram temple inauguration. Released three months before actual inauguration at Ayodhya and six months before the general elections, the brief there was clear. With Emergency, it’s more muddled. Ranaut the politician and idealogue wants to bury Indira. Ranaut the perpetual embattled outsider wants to praise her. The result is a film at war with itself.
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