What explains the ‘Biopic Boom’ in Bollywood ? Is it really an easy way out for producers?  

Last week when a movie producer Nikhil Diwedi announced a biopic on the 1990s’ starlet Mamta Kulkarni, there were titters wafting right down the corridors of tinsel town. Ms Kulkarni is remembered more for her cheesecake skin-revealing magazine covers and her marriage to an alleged drug dealer than for her work as an actress.

The announcement came just weeks before the release of a biopic on the mathematical genius Shakuntala Devi in which Vidya Balan (no stranger to biopics, she had played the controversial Tamil starlet Silk Smitha in 2011 in The Dirty Picture) plays the incredible “human computer”.

Immediately after Shakuntala, another biopic, Gunjan Saxena The Kargil Girl featuring Janhvi Kapoor as the real-life martyred Air Force pilot, will also hit the OTT platform. These are the latest in the long trail of biopics that Bollywood has been churning out with clockwork regularity.

During the five-year period from 2015-20 we have had biopics on sportspersons (Mary Kom, Dangal, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, M S Dhoni The Untold Story, Soorma), politicians (The Reluctant Prime Minister, PM Narendra Modi, Thalaivi) terrorists and gangsters (Omerta, Daddy, Gangubai Kathiawadi) and unsung heroes (Neerja, Manjhi).

Earlier this year, a biopic Chhapaak, on acid-attack survivor Laxmi Aggarwal, played effectively by Deepika Padukone, came and flopped. But biopics are not always faithful to biography. When in 2018 director Raj Kumar Hirani (of Munnabhai fame) directed the blockbuster Sanju, a Sanjay Dutt biopic featuring Ranbir Kapoor as the notoriously rebellious terror-accused Dutt, the film was filled with embarrassing lies and half-truths (there was not even a passing reference to Dutt’s first-born daughter just as the Dhoni pic completely ignored the cricketer’s brother just because they didn’t get along). Sanju was a resounding success one of the few biopics that have worked at the box office.

Could biopics be an easy way out for the creatively arid Bollywood?

Writer-director Apurva Asrani who has scripted the biopics Shahid (based on a former terrorist-turned defence-lawyer for the terror accused) and Aligarh (about a homosexual professor in Aligarh University) denies biopics are the last resort of creative scoundrels.

“This is the age of reality. The more authentic the story and its telling, the more it is loved. I don’t agree that biopics haven’t done well. Whether it’s our critically acclaimed films like Shahid or Aligarh or blockbusters like Dhoni and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, biopics are more than just the flavour of the season.”

Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, whose stunning Article 15 was based on a real political issue, said, “Who or what one chooses to make a film on are personal choices. Even biopic writing must be very tough; so, no, I won’t blame it on lack of creative ideas.”

Nila Madhab Pandya whose National award winning I Am Kalam was based on the ideas of former Indian president A P J Abdul Kalam also says, “I feel we don’t have too many reallife heroes. The real-life heroes from a different time have so much of conflict and drama.”

Telugu star Adivi Sesh, who plays a real-life war hero Sandeep Unnikrishnan in his forthcoming film Major emphatically adds, “Biopics like ALL stories, IF done well, WILL work.”

Ananth Mahadevan, who has directed a number of biopics including Gour Hari Dastan, Mee Sindhutai Sapkal and Dr Rakhmabai, feels biopics have a perennial shelf-life. “There were more honest depictions in films like Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, Sardar, Gandhi and K G George’s Lekha’s Death, An Untold Story on the underbelly of stardom,” he points out.

He feels making biopics is a moral and creative responsibility. “When I made biopics of so-called non-entities yet significant unsung heroes like Sindhutai Sapkal and Gour Hari Das, both living , and the legendary but littleknown Doctor Rakhmabai, my biggest responsibility was to make sure that I was as authentic as possible and not merely glorify my subject but present them with their frailties . Biopics call for integrity of approach, even as one dramatises the events.”

Amole Gupte, who is directing a biopic on the life of badminton player Saina Nehwal, feels biopics are the order of the day. “When I speak in favour of biopics, I mean biopics like Super 30 on mathematician Anand Kumar, Salute on astronaut Rakesh Sharma, Mary Kom, Soorma on hockey player Sandeep Singh and my own film on Saina Nehwal.”

Rakeysh Mehra wants to make a biopic on Mother Teresa. “I think the audience is very unfairly projected by the numbers game. It is insulting to presume audiences don’t want to think while watching a film. They’ve always accepted change, innovative ideas and experiment in cinema.”

Mehra refuses to see the evolution of biopics as a manipulative, money-making exercise. “There are just good and bad films. Somewhere Milkhaji’s story and its theme of suffering during the Partition connected with ethnic and persecuted minorities everywhere. That’s why Carl Lewis reached out to Milkhaji after seeing Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.”

The amazingly talented Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who played a peasant from Bihar who cut a road through the mountains with his hands in Ketan Mehta’s Mountain Man and the controversial Urdu litterateur Sadat Hassan Manto in Nandita Das’s Manto says, “To play a real-life character like Dashrath Manjhi or Manto is not easy. Unlike Milkha or Mary Kom, whose triumphs are well documented in print and in pictures, an unsung hero like Manjhi has not left any documented legacy behind. I have to use all my powers as an actor to get it right. At least for me, biopics are not an easy route to success.”

Hansal Mehta says biopics are important, relevant and indispensable. “As a viewer I have always loved biopics as very often they deal with events and/or characters that are far more relatable and provide an auteur’s insight into lesser known details of the character/event. The danger of success in our industry is the ‘formulization’ of genres and I hope this does not happen to biopics.”

Tigmanshu Dhulia, director of the acclaimed biopic Paan Singh Tomar, feels it makes artistic and box office sense to make a biopic. “You are artistically challenged because you have to be true to the character and to the period to which he belongs and cannot lean on fiction and fantasy. Box office-wise also, you already have a captive audience which wants to know about the life chosen for filming.”

Film Critic Raja Sen feels biopics have their utility for Bollywood. “Biopics allow an actor a vehicle in which to mimic a known personality. The makers attempt to cash in on instant credibility with audiences for telling a story of true achievement. Also, producers may feel a good or popular life is writer-proof and doesn’t need a plot.”