I recently had a chance to watch Bastar—The Naxal Story (2024). It is a train of hastily scribbled scenes with pre-labelled characters shouting down the Left-leaning liberals. The movie is part of a trend of feature films in the last five-odd years claiming to be dramatised versions of true events that look like messages the government is trying to slip inside fortune cookies. How do these films fare commercially and critically?
Despite impressive research in medicine and virology, The Vaccine War (2023) was let down by needlessly making a villain of the media. It trivialised the core subject by suggesting that a journalist, in cahoots with a foreign power, was a co-saboteur of the government’s effort to manufacture an indigenous vaccine. Dramatisation is fine, but sensationalism is not. A new term got coined to describe such films: “WhatsApp Forward Films”.
Coming to biopics, while the hagiography quotient of PM Narendra Modi (2019) may have embarrassed the government itself, the critics tore its screenplay and Vivek Oberoi’s performance to shreds. Evidently no one advised the government that if it wished to use Bollywood as its propaganda chariot it must ensure experienced filmmakers are roped in and appropriate time and budgets allocated, the way Richard Attenborough was given resources and freedom while making Gandhi (1982). Else, it could be actually counterproductive. The screenplay of Main Atal Hoon (2024), for example, runs like a listless Wikipedia synopsis.
Another usual suspect is the integrity of story telling. The track record of veracity of these propaganda films is far from confidence-inducing. A year ago, The Kerala Story had pamphleteered that 32,000 Kerala women (‘unofficially 50,000’, said the protagonist) were brainwashed into Islam, drugged and made willful human bombs of the ISIS. Whereas the total count of ISIS terrorists is less than 30,000. While critics gave the film a mouthful, the then-BJP government in Karnataka promoted the film ahead of the Assembly elections. The Kerala Story was a rare exception of a commercial success but the scar on credible storytelling deepened.
Another film that worked at the Box Office was The Kashmir Files (2022). “This is an info war, an advanced war, a dangerous war. A war of narratives,” laments journalist Vishnu Ram reflecting on the massacre of Kashmiri Pandits in the valley three decades ago. The Kashmir Files was refreshingly less about brouhaha and more about introspection. Yes, there were distinct overtones of the then Congress government’s apathy. But it was like a narration of history, though with a large serving of creative liberty.
The action drama, Article 370, much closer to Bollywood mainstream, did reasonably well, but was not a runaway success. It was informative, narrated tautly and balanced with sincere research into legal history. It also had the difficult task of juggling between multiple villains—Kashmiri militants, Pakistan and Khawar Ali.
So, what is the way forward for these propaganda films? Firstly, avoid making these as far as possible. And if you absolutely must, then invest in documentaries, with true stories and real faces.
Balaji Vittal
Film commentator and author
Posts on X: @vittalbalaji