Blending fact and fiction

To deal with the problem of propaganda films being taken as the truth, we need discerning viewers

Bollywood biopics are one of my pet peeves. Yet I gathered the courage to see Thackeray because I was curious. I never thought I would say this, but I found Thackeray to be a rather well-made propaganda film. I certainly disagree with its politics, but I shuddered thinking to myself and discussing with a friend seated next to me the consequences of a well-made propaganda film. Nawazuddin Siddiqui delivered a most convincing performance as the eponymous central character. While in the same column some months ago, I had critiqued his portrayal of Manto, his performance as Bal Thackeray made me sit up and take notice. Here was a good actor delivering a consummate performance.

I was at a loss. Should I applaud him for his performance or critique what he was choosing to portray on screen? Manto and Thackeray are worlds apart. The actor does his job. He moves on to his next role, but can a role be performed without convincing yourself about the character you are essaying on screen? Isn’t acting fiction though? I had several questions but no easy answers.

The combination of Siddiqui’s performance and the film’s almost compelling storytelling readily pulls you into the narrative. It also occurred to me then that cinema as a mass medium can be used to transform fiction into fact. We often argue that there are numerous ways of writing and recording history beyond academic history books. Cinema has often reached where no book has been able to tread. Think about Ingmar Bergman’s exposition of time and Michelangelo Antonioni’s evocation of space. Through repeated viewing, images often attain a new power, a new historical truth. They can transform our understanding of events. Several war films fit into this bracket. Cinema can create or endorse new histories and this to me was the alarming aspect of the film.

This year several propaganda films were made in Bollywood:

The Accidental Prime Minister , Uri: The Surgical Strike , Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi . While the timing of their release is anybody’s guess, these films clearly serve a nationalist agenda benefiting a certain political ideology.

One also cannot dismiss the commercial aspect of such a decision-making when there is enormous public interest in seeing the lives of well-known and much debated political personalities on screen and other events from the recent past such as the Uri surgical strike, which drew much attention.

For most filmgoers, it is their date with history, their chance to witness an event up-close to form an opinion based on the film’s rendition. Films then become the new truth. To tackle this phenomenon we need a more discerning viewership.

The writer teaches literary and cultural studies at FLAME University, Pune