PM Narendra Modi is a hagiography, not a biography.

How does one not politicise a political film? The film at hand literally has the words ‘PM’, Prime Minister, in it. Of course, we’re talking about PM Narendra Modi, not the man himself, who just swept a second term larger than life, but the shallow biopic based on his life, that has the complexity of a school play and the production value of … well, a school play. But back to my earlier point. How do I, a bonafide liberal (I have already said it, the Bhakts have no need to categorise me an ‘urban naxal’), look past this? I’d say that I fared rather poorly in my reviews of both URI, a dangerously jingoistic film and the deplorable Accidental Prime Minister (I’ll give myself a pass on that one).

But, PM Narendra Modi is simply a lie. It demonises Muslims, all with the purity and smugness of its titular character himself. By pretending to take the moral high ground, it puts across dangerous messages, including one absurd scene where a character says, ‘India is secular because Hinduism has allowed it to be.’ It is rubbish as a film, but we’ll get to that. Its bigger crime is its victimisation of Modi and ‘_____ _____’. I say that because the man in question, Amit Shah’s name, has been blanked out in multiple places, leaving the film with even less to say.

The women are either shown as small town Gujarati firebrands (for the 1.5 second screen time each of them gets) or as vamps (a role, apparently, exclusively reserved for the Gandhi women in Bollywood) who cut stunning roses with the villainy and lust of a serial killing pervert. There is this one odd ‘antagonist’ as such, whose glasses resemble Arnab Goswami’s (oh, the irony), Prashant Narayan, who burns papers with a seething rage (if only it were actor-cum-writer Vivek Oberoi’s script, string of words) in front of a jet black statue of Gandhi.

Halfway through Boman Irani makes an appearance in a sharply-tailored suit as Ratan Tata. I laughed. I’m picking at straws here. PM Narendra Modi is not a ‘biopic’. It’s a lot worse than Sanju, which also absolved its main character of his wrongdoings (but one might argue that at least that film had a competent director who tackled issues head on) and deplorably worse than Neerja. It’s instead a hagiography. It ties back to its 1935 roots, the Nazis’ propagandist film ‘Triumph of Will’ that championed Hitler as a hero. Omung Kumar B (director of the equally horrid Sarbjit) unabashedly pays homage to his subject, by positioning him in every frame. It’s also disturbingly close as a political film to a time in Germany and the US at the beginning of the Second World War.

Vivek Oberoi is severely difficult to like. No doubt, impersonating somebody with Modi’s inherent charm and booming oration skills is tricky, but Oberoi’s performance is stiff. Especially when the film moves onto Modi’s later years, the prosthetics loosely hang onto his head. You can see the layers and layers of powdered perfection, the man behind the mask, whose face, mouth and eyes are held back by this external factor. Not unintentional symbolism, just a scathing critique on the horrible hair and makeup department. But, he’s also bunged down with an impossible task. In today’s day and age, where even the Khans are doing films like The Forrest Gump Remake (Aamir Khan) or ZERO (Shah Rukh Khan), it’s insulting to the audience’s intelligence to play a character with no shades of grey, no imperfection, nothing to laugh at.

From 1950, all the way to 2014, we watch as a model citizen’s life progresses. It’s so heavily uninspired and drab, that it fails even on an artistic count. The biggest problem is the film’s former chunk where Modi joins the RSS, then becomes a bhakt, and then rejoins the RSS. Somewhere, a coin is also involved (my mind is now officially sludge), which is slammed on a wooden table. Amit Shah or Voldemort (He Who Shall Not Be Named) enters soon after.

This is PM Narendra Modi. It’s a reel of greatest hits, but it never hits that soaring crescendo that it desires. It all culminates in this absurd climax that involves a bomb squad, a patriot (who quite frankly seems like quite an asshole for risking so many people’s lives), several (?) holograms, and one or more stolen shots of Modi’s multiple rallies with screaming fans. But this film sends home a very dangerous message. It propagates that our leader is a spotless man who has been wronged by everybody. It also shows the Gandhis (yet again!) as losers, vamps, and mutes (what did Manmohan Singh ever do wrong?).

PM Narendra Modi is stupid. You decide whether I’m talking about the character or the man. Aren’t they both the same at this point?

Rating: 1 star.