What do you make of a biopic that is designed simply to reassert the public image of its subject? Directed by Abhijit Panse, Thackeray is not even an image-reconstruction exercise like, say, Sanju, because there is no need to be one. The public already has a fairly well-defined image of Balasaheb Thackeray. The film, to its credit, does not attempt to disguise what he stood for: his rigid right-wing ideology, his politics of regional identity, and his willingness to use violence to assert supremacy over his opponents. Fair enough. But isn’t all this information available in the public domain anyway? The speeches, the controversies, the political battles – the target audience knows most of it already. This leaves you repeatedly questioning the very reason behind making the film.
A biopic, after all, should ideally take us beyond the archive. It should tell us something about the person that the public record cannot. Thackeray does the exact opposite. It treats the public persona as the complete personality. In that sense, with such elementary writing in place, the film feels no different from a documentary chronicling a famous life. Thackeray refuses to explore its subject’s psychology, insecurities or contradictions and instead chooses to view him from a distant ivory tower.
I will begin with the interesting bits, rather. When was the last time we got to see a mainstream, commercial Hindi film that was shot largely in black-and-white? As risky as it might sound, Thackeray, with its fully monochrome first half, is one of the most beautifully photographed Indian films in recent years. Sudeep Chatterjee’s frames, even in the coloured portions, refuse to make us look away from the screen. There is an almost tactile quality to the imagery, and the monochrome treatment gives the early portions a sense of history without making them look antiquated.
The impact is further accentuated by Ashish Mhatre and Apurva Motiwale Sahai’s snappy editing, which eases out the film’s frequent narrative shifts with remarkable style. Production design (Sandeep Sharad Ravade), makeup, and costumes (Kin Bathija) are other departments that effectively bring out the changing worlds of the characters with great finesse. There is clearly a great deal of craft at work here. That said, with a screenplay as staid and direct as Thackeray’s, there is a limit to what a crackling technical crew can achieve. The film looks far more alive than it feels.
Agreed, Balasaheb, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, had an eventful life that made mammoth differences to many lives. It isn’t really a rags-to-riches tale, but one about an extremely creative man who brought about a revolution in a city, or a state rather, based on certain values that he deemed right. But what was he as a person if we were to strip away all the political and ideological layers from his characterisation? That is precisely where the film draws a blank.
What was he like as a son? As a husband? As a father? What made him laugh? What made him insecure? What did he fear? What did he regret? What did he privately believe about the people who opposed him? Thackeray gives us almost none of this. We see the man rooted in his family setup, but the film rarely allows the family to become a window into the man.
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The problem becomes particularly evident when the film attempts to explain the evolution of his worldview. At one point, we see its protagonist watching an animated film at Mumbai’s iconic Eros Cinema in the company of people he calls outsiders. I am still confused about the showreel attached to the main film. Was it an actual film or a figment of the character’s imagination? In fact, the end credits of the film credit certain Swami, Murthy, Menon, Shah, Lakdawala and others – essentially non-Maharashtrians.
This is where the writing becomes especially questionable. Here is an educated man, an adept cartoonist, a man known for his sense of humour and previously employed at a media house, apparently accumulating ideas from an unfunny, amateurish animated clip. The irony is that the film itself gives us almost no glimpse of Balasaheb’s humour. The real person, one suspects, must have been ten times more charming and witty than the relentlessly aggressive figure presented here.
And that aggression is perhaps the film’s biggest limitation. Through the course of Thackeray, we see a procession of politicians and revolutionaries making their appearances. There is Morarji Desai, Indira Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, and several others, some of whom even resemble their real-life counterparts. Yet the more famous people the film introduces, the more conspicuous its central absence becomes: the man we did not already know.
A good biopic does not necessarily have to redeem its subject. Nor does it have to condemn him. It simply has to understand him. Thackeray seems content with neither. It idolizes its protagonist from the beginning and then mistakes that idolization for character study. The result is a film that tells us plenty about what Balasaheb Thackeray did, but very little about why he became the man who did it.
On the sunny side are the speeches mouthed by Balasaheb Thackeray – possibly lifted from some of his real writings – which sound as authentic as they might have in those days. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is tremendous in the title role, even though the role limits him largely to the seams of his subject’s political beliefs and oratory skills. The character design never gets personal, but Siddiqui makes the most of the material on paper. He does not soften the character for the audience, nor does he appear uncomfortable inhabiting his ideological positions.
The courtroom sequence where he speaks about the controversial Babri Masjid demolition is smartly devised, but also ironic if we take Siddiqui’s real identity into account. One must give it to the actor for surrendering completely to his character’s ideologies, because some of the lines he mouths might sound vile to many. His performance never asks us to approve of Balasaheb; it simply asks us to watch him.
Photographed gorgeously in monochrome, Amrita Rao is perfectly cast as Balasaheb’s wife, Meena Tai, who plays a catalytic part in her husband’s life. To Rao’s credit, she gets one emotional scene to showcase her histrionics, and she does a swell job at it. Prakash Belawadi, as trade union leader George Fernandes, is typecast but effective in his own unique way.
Overall, Abhijit Panse’s Thackeray is an easy victim of an underwritten screenplay. It doesn’t whitewash the controversial leader, which is perhaps its most interesting quality, but it does something equally limiting: it turns a complicated historical figure into an uncomplicated icon.
The irony is that Thackeray spends two hours telling us why Balasaheb Thackeray was important, without ever making us understand why he was the man he was.
While the technical finesse and fine performances make it a watchable film, Thackeray doesn’t contain enough curiosity about its own subject to be called a truly worthy biographical film.
Rating: ★★★
Thackeray is now streaming on Netflix.
