Pankaj Tripathi talks about PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee's biopic Main Atal Hoon and his portrayal of the statesman.
Having played a host of fictional characters on screen (and one notable real person in 83), Pankaj Tripathi is headlining his first biopic now. He plays former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Main Atal Hoon, a film by Ravi Jadhav. A day before the film’s release, Tripathi speaks to DNA about his portrayal of the statesman and attempting to be impartial while retelling his story.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a multi-faceted personality, someone who was a politician, poet, and writer all rolled into one. Talking about trying to contain his life in a film, Tripathi says, “To make a film on Atal ji’s life in two hours is like trying to contain the ocean in a teacup. He led such a grand, vast life that it seems impossible. But even then, Ravi Jadhav and Rishi Virmani picked important incidents from his life and weaved them into a thread so that it looka like a story, which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our film is about a political personality but one who was a poet too. So it’s natural that you will have poetry, politics, or his personal life that people do not know. We have tried to balance all this.”
Political films in India have often been accused of taking a side. Biopics of both PM Narendra Modi and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray faced these accusations. But Tripathi asserts Main Atal Hoon does not take that route. “We are telling this story while being impartial. We are presenting his personality in a neutral manner. Of course, there has been ample research and the writer and the director have their point of view while narrating this story. I am just the vehicle to take that point of view forward. But from what I gathered is that the whole narration is very impartial, where whatever they found in their research, they have kept it,” the actor tells us.
But apart from the political slant, biopics in Indian cinema have often been labelled hagiographies, whitewashing and glorifying the protagonists, be it Sanju or MS Dhoni: The Untold Story. When asked if Main Atal Hoon also stays away from the negatives and controversies of PM Vajpayee’s life, Tripathi says, “I think the audience will see all this on the 19th (the day of the film’s release). If I say that there are personalities in which you can’t find anything gray or contradictory, then what can we do there. But I guess the answer to this question we will get once the film releases and people watch it and analyse it.”
Directed by Ravi Jadhav, the film also stars Piyush Mishra, Raja Rameshkumar Sevak, Daya Shankar Pandey among others. It is slated to release in theatres on January 19.
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 "Pankaj Tripathi in Main Atal Hoon")
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