Main Atal Hoon stars Pankaj Tripathi as PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee in an unevenly-made and bland biopic.
Director: Ravi Jadhav
Cast: Pankaj Tripathi, Piyush Mishra, Raja Rameshkumar Sevak, Ekta Kaul, Daya Shankar Pandey, Pramod Pathak, Payal Nair
Where to watch: Theatres
Rating: 2 stars
Right from its first scene, Ravi Jadhav’s Main Atal Hoon almost jumps at the viewer, grabbing them by the collar and forcing them to pay attention. It is not a violent film by any means but it violently wants you to immerse yourself in this world. The opening scene is enough to put you off with its over-the-top dialoguebaazi and jarring music but you persist, solely for Pankaj Tripathi. But alas, even his attempts at capturing PM Vajpayee’s essence go nowhere in this misguided, one-tone film that is less of a biopic and more of a hagiography.
Main Atal Hoon chronicles the life of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee from 1938 to 1999, detailing how he transformed from young Atla from Agra to RSS functionary Atal and eventually statesman and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Given the diversity in Vajpayee’s personality and the richness of modern Indian history, director Ravi Jadhav has a lot to play with, interspersing incidents of the former PM’s personal life with events of national relevance.
But Main Atal Hoon almost always comes across as a series of anecdotes one after the other, rather than a cohesive story. Similar to the mistake Meghna Gulzar made with Sam Bahadur, Ravi Jadhav hopes that a series of interconnected stories from a life will integrate into a story. But that does not happen. Main Atal Hoon does a slightly better job in charting the protagonist’s character arc but it does so superficially, almost afraid of digging deep.
The superficial way in which Main Atal Hoon goes about chronicling such an interesting life is its biggest fault. It’s clear where the film’s interests lie – in projecting PM Vajpayee’s life in a nice and positive manner, steering clear of anything controversial. In doing so, the film ends up going the Thackerey route, becoming almost a visual manifesto of a political party. That would not be a problem, to be honest, if that was done well. But Main Atal Hoon is not done well, which is the issue.
The film relies heavily upon dialogue, which gets heavy at times, and appears like a sermon at other times. The messaging is not the issue. Every film, every story is bound to have a slant. But letting that slant run away at the expense of storytelling is something where Main Atal Hoon goes wrong. It mistakes grandstanding for storytelling, trying to fit in too many moments and events from PM Vajpayee’s life into the narrative, cluttering it.
Then there is Pankaj Tripathi’s performance, which oscillates between mimicry and acting. The actor does a very great job of capturing the late PM’s essence with his eyes and voice modulation. However, his attempts to capture Vajpayee’s famous mannerisms end up looking caricaturish at times. Tripathi, through the sheer weight of his talent, still manages to look convincing, which is something. Among the support cast, Ekta Kaul and Piyush Mishra stand out for their natural performances, and Raja Rameshkumar Sevak also does a neat job as Lal Krishna Advani.
There are positives to be pointed out. Ravi Jadhav has bravely attempted to touch upon the unique equation PM Vajpayee had with the Kauls, his friends and ‘household members’. That episode is refreshing as it is not often that an Indian biopic attempts to show anything remotely uncomfortable these days. Then, the rousing background score of Monty Sharma does a great job in elevating certain scenes. Ravi Jadhav does deserve some credit for capturing some moments from recent Indian history and turning them into watchable sequences on screen, without going overboard.
But the positives are not enough to fulfil the shortfall, sadly. Main Atal Hoon glosses over a lot of episodes, both in the life of its protagonist and the history of India. It also does not convincingly do justice to the stature of PM Vajpayee, presenting him as rather unidimensional, which is one thing he certainly wasn’t.
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 "Pankaj Tripathi in Main Atal Hoon")
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