One would imagine that a film titled Emergency about Indira Gandhi would delve into the dark days that India’s first female Prime Minister ushered in from 1975 to 1977. But the period becomes a bulleted historical box in Kangana Ranaut’s 147-minute directorial that begins from Indira’s childhood to her assassination in 1982. Much like everything else in the film.
The only thing that is front and centre in the film is Kangana’s performance as one of the most powerful women in the world. Shored up by impressive prosthetics, she does look the part of the Iron Lady, but a distinctive nose, a streak of white and khadi saris in muted colours don’t an Indira make.
Once Kangana gets to Indira’s mannerisms and voice, she ends up (assuming that was not what was intended) making her a caricature. The darting eyes, the head tilt, the inability to meet anyone’s eyes and the constant lip-chewing that cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata zooms in on with lengthy close-ups end up looking like Indira had a perennial nervous twitch. Add in the attempted, and failed, voice and accent, and the caricature feels complete. There is none of the steel, the canniness and the decisiveness that made Indira a force to reckon with in Indian politics.
Written by Kangana with screenplay by Ritesh Shah, the story is said to be based on two books — Coomi Kapoor’s The Emergency and Jaiyanth Vasanth Sinha’s Priyadarshini: The Daughter of India. The disclaimer at the beginning of the film does say that creative liberties have been taken, but nothing can prepare one for Indira Gandhi, Sam Manekshaw (Milind Soman) and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Shreyas Talpade) breaking into chest-thumping patriotic song (thankfully the dance is absent) while announcing war on Pakistan in 1971.
Kangana’s Emergency depicts Indira’s unhappy childhood and contentious relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru — who is identified as someone who “never understood India” and overlooks the choice of Indira as PM candidate by the Syndicate because she would be malleable for parivarbad — and goes straight into her becoming not just power hungry but neurotic about her position. Most events in Indira’s rise to power, fall from it and her resurrection become blink-and-you-miss mentions in the film.
There was more to the Emergency than buses and trains running on time, press censorship, arrest of opposition leaders led by Jayprakash Narayan (Anupam Kher), and beautification and forced sterilisation but the film doesn’t delve too much into what was Indira’s biggest political blunder, just like everything else. Of course an impetuous Sanjay Gandhi (a noteworthy performance by Vishak Nair) is the villain of the piece, egged on by a mother’s blind love. Rajiv Gandhi is a footnote in the bullet-point retelling of Indira’s life, much like most of the other characters who parade in and out of the screen without any context.
In its rush to do a highlights reel of the life and times of Indira Gandhi, Emergency comes across as one-dimensional, shallow and hastily done, making the film a slog to watch.
