How patriotism on screen continued in 2021, with period films like Sardar Udham and sports movies like 83

The opening scene of Saina, a biopic of the celebrated Badminton icon that released in March this year, unravels with the protagonist’s racing thoughts as she is in the middle of a crucial game — about patriarchy and all the barriers faced by women to date, their fate often sealed at the age of 18.

And yet, her next line is, "Main Saina.. Bharat ki beti." Despite all the prejudice and adversities, the legendary player cannot disassociate herself from her nation — how she sees herself in relation to her country’s pride remains the leading thought.

Even though director Amole Gupte does well to steer clear of jingoistic clichés later on in the narrative, this two-minute stretch pretty much sums up the biggest mission undertaken by popular Hindi cinema in the last couple of years — to layer the narrative with patriotism, and play it safe with the increasingly jingoistic times. And they are choosing to do it the easiest way they know — through sports films and war movies.

2021 took that mission only forward as we saw several biopics or real events-based movies throughout the year, that dealt with the themes of patriotism in some form or other.

There is a reason why sports movies and war movies have been limited in numbers all these years — it is because they are limited in scope, for experiment or innovation.

There is eventually a certain narrative arc a sports movie can adhere to. And yet, their limitations of late have been compensated for with their capacity to generate a feeling of nationalism.

This is not to say that Hindi cinema was ever devoid of soft-peddled propaganda. Among other things, there has been a low-key but conscious deification of vigilante justice, army, and police forces (something which continued this year as well, with films like Satyamev Jayate 2 and Sooryavanshi) — the only difference being they were mostly fictional narratives, and did not claim to be anything more (even though Sooryavanshi made references to several actual events, and was far more problematic).

Biopics, however, as most of the filmmakers have come to realise, bring with themselves a cunning sense of legitimacy. We cannot question the writers or criticise them for any unauthentic portrayals when they have been documented in some way, or as the most recurring visual in our films these days goes, “based on true events.”

To their credit, films like Shershaah and Saina went easy on the patriotism trope despite their obvious fodder for it. Saina concentrates significantly on the legendary player’s struggles with her fame and its trappings, a fallout with her idealistic mentor, the barriers she faces as a woman sportsperson, and her eventual redemption. Shershaah, which was one of the most streamed films this year, too dedicates a generous amount of screen time to its protagonists’ ambivalent attitude towards joining the army, and even later on, stays neutral in the war sequences. When away from its gritty combat sequences, we get to see Vikram Batra’s (Sidharth Malhotra) personable skills both with his colleagues and locals, and of course the heartwarming relationship with his beau Dimple (Kiara Advani). So when Vikram finally meets his unfortunate fate, we feel the loss instead of merely celebrating his admirable sense of selflessness from a distance.

And yet, these two genres still remain so interlinked with the ideas of nationalism that unless a filmmaker makes very conscious efforts to thwart oneself away, these films would always remain cooped up under that umbrella that belongs to nationalism. Nothing proves it better than the latest release this week.

Kabir Khan’s 83 has several flaws. And yet, the very story it tells — the ultimate underdog sporting tale — and the themes of gap-bridging nationalism that drives it where everyone comes together, keeping communal as well as border tensions aside to root for the cricket team as they clinch the World Cup in the land of the ones who had colonised them. 83 has opened up to weeping auditoriums, brimming collectively in the nostalgia and their common love for cricket, sweeping all its shortcomings under the carpet.

What could possibly be so objectionable about making films that celebrate national accomplishments, one may ask. The objections arise because of the ensuing visible lethargy amongst the filmmakers who now seem satisfied with their bare-skeleton approach towards the story as long as it makes the audience feel better about their country — which frankly is a reassurance all of us need right now — it is just that some are more blatant about their craving for it.

This lethargy that I speak of was most prominently visible particularly in two films this year that so outrageously tinkered with the history books that the question begged to ask — how far is too far when it comes to modifying the truth for box-office pandering?

Bhuj: The Pride of India, starring Ajay Devgn in the lead, was one giant pool of chest-thumping mess, emblematic of the ensuing problems when the sole aim of a film is on scoring jingoism brownie points instead of maintaining a cohesive narrative. And yet, what was more troubling was how the makers sidelined the most astounding feat of that war — the coming together of 300 local villager women to rebuild the bombed airstrip within 72 hours — choosing instead to fuel itself on very generic war action-driven visuals and done-to-death monologues about upkeeping the nation's honour. The saddest part was how more screen time was given to underline the unbridled evil of Pakistani officials, who are consistently described as ‘the brother who betrayed India time and again,’ than to highlight the fearless endeavour of those hundreds of villagers. If that does not inform you of the filmmakers’ intention, nothing else will.

Akshay Kumar-starrer Bell Bottom went a step further. Recounting the IC 421 hijack that took place in 1984, the film is a rather taut thriller, well-paced in its narration. However, it ends up yarning such a fabricated account in order to incorporate and valourise the Indian forces in rescuing the passengers, that it devastatingly undermined the support of UAE officials in the mission. To no one’s surprise then, Bell Bottom stands banned in three middle-eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar). Kumar, like Devgn, has been a rather active supporter of the current government, and it shows in the way many of his recent films have consistently peddled jingoism at the cost of truth and honest recounting of history — and Bell Bottom neatly belongs in that list.

However, like the most baffling, the best of Hindi cinema too came from this genre.

On the surface, Sardar Udham might look like any other period drama trying to cash on the patriotism bandwagon. However, Shoojit Sircar really pushes the envelope here, using the opportunity to draw a parallel between our freedom struggle in the 1930s and '40s and the current times where we struggle to go back to a truly free and democratic state. The antagonist here may be British Raj, but Sircar stages his narrative as a rebel against the universal ideas of fascism imperialism, in a way that they feel contemporary and relevant. And most importantly, Sircar drew a clear line between patriotism and jingoism, and what lies at the core of these sentiments. In a very limited time, Sircar even made space to capture the root of Bhagat Singh’s ideology with enormous clarity and precision, baffling some of the right-leaning audience members who had been co-adopting and using his name to settle their own political scores.

What makes Sardar Udham all the more riveting is how Sircar portrayed Udham less like a fearless martyr, and more like an existential man going through his own share of fears, self-doubt, and years of perseverance before he could finally accomplish what he set out to do.

The critical acclaim and acceptance received by Sardar Udham goes to show that there is a dire need to reinvent the formula — because we know the formula is here for a while, considering how at least half-a-dozen biopics are slated for a 2022 release already. So here is signing off with the hope that our filmmakers go beyond the genre trappings, and find newer ways to tell their stories — if they want their films to be remembered beyond the present jingoism-filled regime, that is.

BH Harsh is a film critic who spends most of his time watching movies and making notes, hoping to create, as Peggy Olsen put it, something of lasting value.

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