The word this season is propaganda.With Adipurush flattening out at the box office, perhaps all BJP CMs and deputy CMs from Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Yogi Adityanath to Himanta Biswa Sarma and Devendra Fadnavis must have learnt a vital political lesson — never endorse any creative piece of work until you’ve actually seen it.
The red flag should have gone up when the teaser last year drew so much flak that the filmmakers made a show of scuttling back to the drawing board. But after seeing the film, it is evident that Om Raut and team had hoped that by simply lying low for six months, the storm would pass and they would bring the audience in by riding what they perceived was a Hindutvawave in the country.
Consider the overtly religiouspromotions. The trailer launch in May had a calibrated overdose of “Jai Shree Ram” from the cast and crew on stage, where Saif Ali Khan was glaringlyabsent. In fact, Ravana was missing from all the marketingstrategies that were aggressivelyreligious in nature, including a trip by the lead cast to Tirupati Balaji. The array of BJP leaders should have been alerted when one seat was reservedin every theatre for Lord Hanuman. How could they have missed the producers’ desperate reliance on divine help?
There are takeaways for the filmmakers too. Among the many irksome missteps in the screenplay and execution was Bahubali actor Prabhas’s insistence on retaining his moustache. What was more important for Om Raut,the writer-director? The sanctity of his subject or signing on a Rs 150-crore star who came with “conditions apply”? When you make any epic, if you have faith in your story and filmmaking abilities, you don’t bend before your hero, give in to his whims and compromise with the all-important look of the lead character.
In the original Ramayan that Ramanand Sagar made for the television three decades ago, Arun Govil was cast as Rama not only because of his 24/7 availability but alsobecause he had the perfect triangular torso required to play the part. Long before SalmanKhan made shirtless popular, even Sunil Lahiri, who played Lakshmana, had to take off his shirt for Sagar to okay him for the bare torso sequences.
In other words, you don’t tailor thetitular character according to a hero’sdemands. If Hrithik Roshan could tan himselfto play mathematician Anand Kumar in Super 30 and SRK could grow a beardand sport a ponytail until Pathaan wascomplete, why couldn’t Prabhas get rid of his moustache?
A sterling example is that of Rajini- kanth. For Sri Raghavendrar (1985), his 100th film, where he played Swami Ragha-vendra Tirth, Rajini reverentially shavedoff his moustache, the only time in his career when he went clean-shaven on screen.At the peak of his super-stardom, that was the devotionhe showed when playing a saint and in no way did it dent his macho image. Pra-bhas is not even in Rajini’s league. In fact, after Bahubali, Prabhas’s Saaho (2019) and Radhe Shyam (2022) have been singularly unimpressive. So what image and what stardomwas he preserving?
Of course, the moustache and all other inaccuracies would have been brushed away if Adipurush had been a powerful film. But even after changing certain dialogues and bringing down the ticket price to a uniform Rs 150, the collections are weak.
Which brings us back to the word propaganda. Did films like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story collect over Rs 350 crore and Rs 290 crore, respectively, and become blockbusters only because they were “propagandafilms” backed by the ruling party?
Propaganda and patriotism, two words used these days to explain a hit film, are not standalone elements that can bring the audience in. For instance, Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) succeeded because of catchy dialogues such as “How’s the josh” and the right mix of emotions. But the recently-released IB71, a potent, real story of an Indianvictory over a Pak-China plot during the Bangladesh war, couldn’t stir the same patriotic fervour.
Similarly, whatever the propaganda, all the CMs of the land couldn’t wash the box-office bloodbath last week.
