Sanju — Why Raju, why?

‘Sanju’ is unlike anything Rajkumar Hirani has directed before! Would the master filmmaker be able to crack a story that’s not about social change, a story that will most likely have very little humour, a story that’s definitely out of his comfort zone? It was with these questions that I walked into ’Sanju’.

The film creates a character — that of Biographer Anushka Sharma, who essentially is the embodiment of writers Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi as they trace Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt’s journey through his own accounts and that of his current wife Manyata Dutt. The accounts however are limited to his outer context of drugs and terror charges and the inner context of his relationship with his father and his best friend!

Hirani must have found it hard to understand and narrate why an essentially over-entitled man-child kept trying to self-destruct but the Director tries very hard by taking you through the burden of a perfect Sunil Dutt’s expectations on Sanju, through how he loses his mother Nargis to cancer and how one careless move aided by frivolous, sensationalist media coverage condemns him for good. But you never buy into much of it for even after it all, you never empathise with Sanju as the best explanations for his misdemeanours remain his own bad choices and selfishness. Hirani fails to portray a rounded picture of a flawed human being. The approach adopted to describe the man has very little gray even though his actions are always so. Maybe a dark life would have been handled better by a darker, more cynical filmmaker like Anurag Kashyap but Hirani’s light, optimistic style fails to do justice to the character. What also doesn’t work is that there is literally only a single shot of Sanjay Dutt in front of a camera, the film otherwise completely forgets that his claim to fame was only because he was a successful movie star!

Thankfully, unlike hagiographies like ‘M S Dhoni’ where the protagonist can never do any wrong, Sanjay Dutt is the “King of bad choices” and therefore the film does not exonerate Sanjay Dutt of his misdemeanours. But I was left wondering about the very point of telling this whole story at the end. It felt chaotic and unsatisfying with no linearity and no convincing climax either. That would’ve been fine had you been left in an uncomfortable position like a Kashyap film but the problem is that this film thinks Sanjay Dutt wins at the end whereas you’re pretty indifferent by then.

Ranbir Kapoor IS Sanjay Dutt, whether it is his voice, his enactment of Dutt’s peculiar droop and rather inexpressive face, you’ll find it tough to decipher where Ranbir ends and Dutt begins. Vicky Kaushal as Sanju’s best friend is brilliant but one wishes Gujarati characters in Bollywood finally extend beyond “holes” and “snakes”. Paresh Rawal plays Sunil Dutt and while he strikes all the right chords, you can’t help wonder if he was miscast as his unmistakable Gujarati diction, his image as a comedian and dare I say — his pro-fascism stance clash with the portrayal of a fiercely idealistic and secular Sunil Dutt. The music, despite one song by guest-composer A R Rahman fails to make a mark. Anushka Sharma, Diya Mirza, Sonam Kapoor, Jim Sarbh play bit-part roles and are functional. Moreover, this is one of the rare Hindi films I’ve watched that had English subtitles all-through and it was unbelievable how bad and inaccurate they were even if they intended to translate and not just subtitle: “Chalti ka naam gaadi” was written as “Mary Poppins” and “Paani Puri” as “Waffles”.

It is a testament to Hirani’s storytelling and Ranbir’s superlative performance that you still remain engaged in the goings-on but otherwise this is a largely forgettable film that shall leave no impression on you when you step out. Hirani is to my mind an activist, a changemaker who reaches tens of millions of people with his socially impactful messages. With his track record, this film shall make a lot of money and its 34 Crore highest opening day of 2018 is testament to that but to me, this is Hirani’s weakest film so far, the first chink in his otherwise impenetrable armour.

Maybe he was touched by the first superstar who did his first film, maybe his heart took over with gratitude for the man but I hope he returns to his trademark social messages with humour and emotion soon!