Films about desh bhakti and nationalism were so far the domain of Akshay Kumar. Well, look who’s dropped in! None other than John Abraham with a moustache playing one of the scientists who exploded those series of historic nuclear test at Pokhran on May 11, 1998.
In a voiceover brimming with self-importance we are told that this is a historic happening that needs to be revisited in the same spirit that the 1983 World Cup was celebrated.So here is the underlining assumption: that this film will put the Pokhran test-exploisions on the map of renown on a par with the 1983 World Cup.
There is just one hitch here: cricket and Pokhran are worlds apart. How many of today’s potential moviegoers are interested in knowing what really happened at Pokhran on May 11, 1998′ And how capable is this film of shedding illuminating light on the events that led to India becoming a nucleur state’
The answer to both the questions is not very encouraging. Not only are today’s audiences disinterested in the subject, the treatment of the theme and the packaging of the plot in “Parmanu” smacks of amateurishness and self-glorification.
Not one shot or frame in the trailer seems to do justice to the momentous events in that small sleepy village of Rajasthan that shook the world.
It certainly seems to have shaken the Americans in the film. And not in a good way.There are shots of Caucasian junior artistes(as ‘American’ as Apu is ‘Indian’ in The Simpsons) fuming and foaming around their mouths bellowing, ‘We must stop them.’
I think the trailer is trying to tell us that the Americans felt enormously threatened when India exploded those test bombs. As threatened as the Britishers were when Mahatma Gandhi undertook the Salt March.
Move over, Ben. There is competition from John.
The sequences showing the nuclear devices being assembled look pretty tacky from afar.I sincerely hope I am wrong. But so far what we see in the trailer is an extremely vapid recreation of a historic contingency that reeks of self-glorification for its leading man.
I don’t mind seeing history being manned and augmented by screen heroism. But when the basic situation is compromised by a complete poverty of imagination and insight and when the endeavour is designed to play up only one of the dramatis personae, then it’s time to worry.
Incidentally the director of “Parmanu” Abhishek Sharma earlier made a satire on Osama bin Laden. Is this also a satire by any chance’
By Subhash K Jha
