Main Atal Hoon Review - Historically Accurate Biopic Of A Political Legend With Cinematic Flaws

Main Atal Hoon Review: Atal Bihari Vajpayee's political career is a textbook of principles and leadership for anyone who wants to be a great political leader. Ravi Jadhav takes us into Vajpayee's life with his latest cinematic offering, Main Atal Hoon. Those who know Ravi Jadhav for his masterclass in Natrang and Balgandharva will agree with me if I say this movie is nowhere close to that. Balgandharva actually took Ravi Jadhav to the next level after a classic debut like Natrang before he went into the commercial zone of Balak Palak and Time Pass. The same director who had 4 back-to-back acclaimed films also made Time Pass 2, Rampaat, and Banjo, which is unthinkable. He made a strong comeback with Nude and Ananya before going back to Bollywood again after Banjo. For a fresher, you might have to bear excuses, but with Ravi Jadhav and especially from someone like me who has seen his entire filmography, a thing like Main Atal Hoon certainly comes under suspicion. What is wrong with his direction nowadays? This tale of Atal Ji is historically so accurate that one can even check it with achieve/old footage on the internet and prove it right in court. It's just that the cinematic execution isn't that good. The film has some strong speeches and engrossing drama but falls short of a cinematic achievement due to flaws in filmmaking.Based on Atal Bihari Vajpayee's life, the film takes off from Atal's childhood, when he was afraid of making speeches at school. His father tells him to make his mind stable and focus on the main context to make better speeches rather than trying to memorise them. The boy gives a solid speech at a school function and then makes an "Atal" promise of learning things and remembering them for a lifetime. Cut-to a few years later, Atlaa, aka Atal, joins RSS and sacrifices his youth and life to the RSS' services. His short love life ends sooner than expected as the girl leaves the place, making Atal shift to Kanpur for law studies. After independence, he joins the Akhil Jansangha party, supported by the RSS, which later transforms into the Janta Party and then the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). The plot explores all his political activities, struggles, decisions, and personal life to some extent until he takes an oath as the 10th Prime Minister of India.Ravi Jadhav and Rishi Virmani have taken notes from all historical events to make sure that nothing about this film will be called fake. That famous Ram Leela Ground meeting, Vajpayee's 1 vote bitterness in the parliament, his viral comment to a Pakistani journalist who asked for Kashmir, the Pokhran Test, the Babri Masjid incident, Operation Blue Star, and many other national and political events—Main Atal Hoon tries to make a mirror image of every event and successfully convinces you to believe them as real ones. The film lacks powerful scenes, or, better yet, scene-making, and that is the fault of the screenwriter and director, I think. It needed that marathon runtime to cover all these things, as every big political event in Atal Ji's career was important, but he should have given it a tight grip and a fascinating presentation. The film and the screenplay faltered there while exploring these things on the big screen.Pankaj Tripathi has 3 looks in the film, and he is good in 2 of them. That 1 look creates problems for him as the prosthetics are clearly visible for the wrong reasons. One more point to be taken into consideration is that Vajpayee's personality and style were so different and peculiar that they're very difficult to recreate. It'll look like you are mimicking him, and that's what the problem is here. Pankaj Tripathi does leave an impact in some scenes, though. But as mentioned before, it's humanly impossible to imitate Atal Ji's style and not give any vibes of mimicry. Raja Rameshkumar Sevak looks exactly like L. K. Advani. Hail the casting director and make-up artist for the unbelievable accuracy they kept with the recreation of those characters. Every single character looks cinematically real, be it Pramod Mahajan (Harshad Kumar), Shyamaprasad Mukherjee (Pramod Pathak), Sushma Swaraj (Gauri Sukhtankar), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Daya Shankar Pandey), or Golwalkar (Prasanna Ketkar). The only flawed appearances are Indira Gandhi (Payal Nair) and Nehru ji (Haresh Khatri). Overall, it's a great casting coup, no doubt.Now coming to negative aspects, the technical categories. First, the background music is sometimes terribly outdated and sometimes emotionally appealing but overused. The cinematography could have been much better, and the colour shade was too sepia like. In some scenes, the framework has caught moments that are close to actual photos we have on the internet. The production design was fairly decent for this moderate budget. Ravi Jadhav has made a biopic on a legend like Balgandharva, who is like a miracle that comes once in a century. After watching that film, you can never forget who Balgandharva was and what he meant. Jadhav had the same opportunity here, as I personally believe that Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the greatest political leader our country has ever seen after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. This man has lived a life that can inspire millions, and it's far from today's PR-based and agenda-driven politicians. The BJP was lucky to have him and so many others, and that's one of the major reasons why it is the biggest political party in India right now. Ravi Jadhav could have made a biopic that would have become an inspiration to many BJP leaders and party workers, and even though it looked a bit propagandised, it was still never fake. I mean, that propaganda was real. You can call it an anti-Congress film, but you must know that Vajpayee was firm about his views about the Congress party. Take it or leave it. Yet Jadhav slips with his cinematic skills and ends up delivering an average flick that had much bigger potential. Watch it to learn about the legendary politician, poet, statesman, and gentleman, but don't expect a legendary film.