Jagan Shakti’s Mission Mangal has been touted as ‘India’s first space film’ but Indian cinema’s tryst with the space isn’t a new phenomenon. India’s first space film was made in 1963—Tamil-American co-production, Kalai Aras. Mohan (MG Ramachandran) is a farmer who falls for Vani (P Bhanumathi). There are hints of a budding romance, when, suddenly, the screen cuts to black. Over an ominous score, a flying saucer is seen hurtling through space. Inside, two aliens are manning the spacecraft. They appear humanoid, with comical helmets, and converse in Tamil. The aliens are headed to Earth to abduct Vani, whose artistic talents they wish to bring to their scientifically advanced (but culturally wanting) planet.
A box-office disaster, Kalai Arasi remains a goofy starting point for sci-fi cineastes in India. The cinematography was by J G Vijayam, who had won an award from France for his innovations in Ponmudi (1950). Then, in 1967 came Chand Par Chadayee, the first Hindi-language film to venture into space. It starred Dara Singh as Astronaut Anand, who beat Neil Armstrong by a good two years to lay his claim on the moon. The film’s title recalls Georges Mélies’s silent-era classic A Trip to the Moon (1902), though the tributing ends there. Directed by T P Sundaram, the film is a resolutely Indian as it opens with an alluring female moonling (Padma Khanna) trying to woo an Indian scientist with song and dance.
The combined legacy of Kalai Arasi and Chand Par Chadayee remained unruffled for decades. Aliens eventually made a comeback in films such as Koi Mil Gaya, Joker and PK. However, all of them played out on Earth, and ‘space exploration’ as a subgenre was yet to grip Indian filmmakers. Then, in 2018, three films from separate industries brought about a welcome resurgence. First arrived Shakti Soundar Rajan’s Tik Tik Tik, in Tamil, which picked up praise for its visual effects created by Ajax Media Tech. This was followed by Telugu filmmaker Sankalp Reddy’s Antariksham 9000 KMPH and Aanand L Rai’s Zero, both released on December 21.
The first film charts a more realistic territory, with a former scientist (Varun Tej) being brought out of seclusion to course-correct a rogue satellite. There’s more scientific tinkering to relish than Tik Tik Tik, though the budgetary constraints bleed through in the bigger set-pieces. Zero, on the other hand, was more in the domain of magic realism.
As of mid-2019, at least four space-themed Indian films are in the offing, starting with Mission Mangal. The film looks to celebrate the women scientists behind the 2014 Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) conducted by ISRO. Fronted by Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan, Mission Mangal features an ensemble cast of Taapsee Pannu, Sonakshi Sinha, Nithya Menen, Kirti Kulhari, Sharman Joshi and others. Taapsee, who plays a navigation engineer in the film, says, “From the time they launched the space probe till it entered the Mars orbit, a lot was going on. Visually speaking, there hasn’t been a film like Mission Mangal in India before.”
In November last year, US-based filmmaker Radha Bhardwaj filed a copyright infringement suit against the makers of Mission Mangal. Radha’s new film, Space MOMs, is also based on the Mangalyaan scientists. In her suit, the director has accused producer Atul Kasbekar of showing her script to Jagan Shakti, despite signing a non-disclosure agreement. Radha shares, “I copyrighted my script in 2016 and filed the suit in November 2018, just after (Mission Mangal) was announced. It’s been eight months and now that film is set to release, but I am still waiting for a hearing on my claim.”
Two more biopics on Indian space legends are in the works.
The first is Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, which marks the directorial debut of R Madhavan. It is based on the life of Nambi Narayanan, a former ISRO scientist and aerospace engineer who was falsely accused of espionage. The second is Saare Jahan Se Achcha, a biopic on Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma, who is the first Indian to travel to space as part of the Soviet Interkosmos programme. As per latest reports, actor Vicky Kaushal is a top contender for the role, though no official announcement has been made. Screenwriter Anjum Rajabali says the biopic is on track, “The script is in place. The director (Mahesh Mathai) and producers (RSVP Movies) are there. We will definitely make the film,” he shares. There’s another space film, titled Chanda Mama Door Ke, that was announced in 2018
but was stalled due to date conflicts with lead actor Sushant Singh Rajput.