How Sanju teaches us the trick to package a flop story into a blockbuster
We don’t judge a book by its cover.
Bollywood has developed a unique way to redeem its most notorious members. It has its 'bhai' in Salman Khan, who can do no wrong in both real and reel life. Then it has its 'baba', Sanjay Dutt, who is all set to assume the magnanimity of a Greek tragic hero as his biopic Sanju hits the theatres on June 29.
There is no dearth of biopics in Bollywood, but the subjects have mostly been achievers from sports and politics. Bollywood has rarely made biopics of its actors during their lifetime, because of the obvious “if”s and “but”s.
Vidya Balan’s Silk Smitha in The Dirty Picture (2011) came long after the actress had died (1996). The recent Telugu movie Mahanati on the life of Savitri Ganeshan has left her family members unimpressed. Instances like this explain why filmmakers often introduce a biopic as pure fiction in an attempt to steer clear of such controversies.
But Sanju is different.
It will be remembered — if not as a turning point in Sanjay Dutt, Ranbir Kapoor and Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s lives — as a biopic which has been wholeheartedly supported by the subject itself. In all probability, Sanjay Dutt might have a special appearance in the film as well.
We don’t judge a book by its cover. Neither are we judging Sanju by its trailer, which has valourised Sanjay Dutt’s reported drug addiction, his underworld connections, his charisma which apparently got him laid by over 300 women. The trailer also offers a sneak peek of how Sanjay Dutt’s indomitable willpower rescued him from the quicksand of destruction and finally put him on the right track.
Time and again, director Rajkumar Hirani has claimed that he hasn’t given a clean chit to Sanjay Dutt.
Then, what did he actually do?
Did he depict him as an entitled spoilt brat, who went astray and found many, many people to mollycoddle him at various stages in his life because he had both money and solid political swag?
No, the truth is stranger than fiction.
Sanjay Dutt and Rajkumar Hirani share a strong bond; they refer each other as family. There is nothing wrong in it obviously. Sanjay Dutt has been the man behind Hirani’s successful Munnabhai franchise. No wonder, Sanjay Dutt has a big fan in Hirani. In an interview about Sanju and the many doubts over its honest portrayal of Dutt, Hirani has said this: “But what is his crime? That he kept a gun? Did he shoot anybody with the gun? Did he threaten, or kill anybody with the gun?”
So, a Bollywood actor found guilty for the illegal possession of arms which got wound up in a major terrorism case now has the entire nation waiting to cast a freshly gilded look at all the unfortunate events of his life. Courtesy, his director friend, who is also a deliverer of Bollywood blockbusters, leading a pack of actors who are totally enamoured by Sunju baba's swag.
And before Sanju begins its journey, it displays all the signs of a box office windfall. Almost all the scenes shown in the trailer have managed to offend various sections of people. In one scene, Sonam Kapoor, essaying the character of one of the wives of Sanjay Dutt, rushes in and asks Ranbir (Sanju) where her mangalsutra was. An entirely sloshed Ranbir gets up from the toilet seat, lifts up the seat cover and hangs that around her neck. Another scene showing the overflowing toilet of a prison has already gone under the censor's knife.
The trailer has created enough stir to push the audience to the halls to watch what Sanjay Dutt and Raj Kumar Hirani jointly tailored.
Not long ago, Sanjay Dutt took great offence when journalist-writer Yaseer Usman’s The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy was released in March. The actor said he never authorised the writer or the publisher to produce his biography.
So, at the end, it’s not the story that matters.
The storyteller matters.