The dark Horse

Will Madhur Bhandarkar return to form with his upcoming political drama‘Ind Sarkar’?

Not many of us are probably Madhur Bhandarkar fans. His cinema is not what we can call the regular cinema. In fact, most of the times he seems to have been stuck in the nowhere land.Masses do not exactly love his brand of cinema and purists find him to be shallow. May be because he shows mirror to the fake world that highbrow purists live in.We will never really be able to pin point.

The intriguing part, however, remains that a man who has given us such amazing content in ‘Chandni Bar’ and then a personal favourite –‘Page 3’. Has never really been given his due fair share.

There is however a simple hardfact about Bhandarkar. Like him or hate him he has created his own brand of cinema.His movies do make a certain amount of noise and to an extent a certain amount of money too at the box office.

However, over the years Bhandarkar was becoming repetitive, taking a cynical view of all that is wrong with the highbrow society in movies like ‘Corporate’ and ‘Fashion’, his movies had started looking like just a rehash of his first in the genre called ‘Page 3’.

Out of blue came the trailer of ‘Indu Sarkar’ and it does look like a movie, which will bring Bhandarkar back in the reckoning.For one it has simmering intensity from its lead actress Kirti Kulhari.

The dialogue –“Arjun keiradehilsaktehain,ghayalDraupadikenahi” - is still a take away dialogue from the trailer, which has managed almost as much views on YouTube as the much bigger and much higher anticipated ‘Baadshaho’. The reason you could compare these two is because both are based on the backdrop of emergency.

The other reason one is optimistic that ‘Indu Sarkar’ could bring Bhandarkar back in the thick of things is because the last time Bhandarkar made a movie on how the system can become exploitative and fail the citizens, it was his best work called ‘Chandni Bar’.

‘Indu Sarkar’ is based on one of our most exploitative times the “1975 Emergency”. Bollywood has not attempted many on this narrative and barring a “Hazar KhwaishAisee” by Sudhir Mishra there is practically nothing from Bollywood on that period.This is where ‘Indu Sarkar’ could score.

The trailer does give a glimpse that it is an intense story of those days, where lives of millions changed for no fault of theirs. It might or might not be factually accurate. It might of course get stunted by the demands of masala cinema but for Bhandarkar fans it can be good news that he is going back to his strength and he is also attempting a theme, which is totally different from his recent outings.

The last factor is very simple to judge - we all love underdogs don't we. We love the stories where an underdog downs a powerful nemesis or scores a come from behind victory. We all love it when a character, who has our kind of problems is fighting to win.

To add to the above, ‘Indu Sarkar’ is a story of a cornered nowhere to go to woman. This is why one can say, maybe,Bhandarkar has a big winner on his hands already.

Add the presence of old hands like Anupam Kher as character actors, ‘Indu Sarkar’ could well turn out to be the dark horse of 2017.