“Sanju”… The complex life of a cipher of a

man is reduced to a simplistic entertainer

– Baradwaj Rangan | Posted on July 2, 2018

Spoilers ahead…

When Rajkumar Hirani announced Sanju, it sounded like

a breakaway. He makes movies about outsiders. If
Munna Bhai was an outsider to the establishment, one of
the 3 idiots was an outsider to the rote-learning rat race,
and then we got a film about the ultimate outsider: an
alien. I wondered how Hirani would handle the story of a
cosseted industry insider — but it turns out the Sanju
of Sanju is an outsider, too, a square peg in a round hole.
He doesn’t fit his father’s expectations, his girlfriend’s
dreams, and he doesn’t live up to his best friend’s
friendship and his countrymen’s expectations of a
patriotic citizen. The difference is that Hirani’s other
outsiders were forced into the situations they found
themselves in (say, due to being left behind on earth),
whereas everything Sanju did, he chose to do. The hope,
therefore, was that the film would provide the why-s
behind Sanjay Dutt’s actions. So many boys have
domineering fathers and mothers who die early. They
don’t end up snorting coke. So many Mumbai-ites
received threats after the 1993 bomb blasts. They didn’t
buy arms from the underworld. Was Sanju an emotional
fool? Was he weak of will? Or was he someone who was
programmed to flirt with fire? What makes this poor
little rich boy so special, so different that we empathise
with his lapses into behaviours we’d not so easily
overlook in others?

That should have been Sanju. That’s what Sanju isn’t.

It’s usually not the audience’s business what the writer
puts into a biopic, and what he leaves out. (Or writers in
this case, Hirani and his regular partner-in-crime,
Abhijat Joshi.) That’s why the same life can come in
many versions. Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi chose to
look at the Mahatma through a reverential lens, while
Feroz Abbas Khan’s Gandhi, My Father cut Bapu down
to size as someone so obsessed with his role of father of
the nation that he forgot to be a father to his
son. Sanjudoesn’t shy away from its protagonist’s bad
choices. Manyata Dutt, played by Dia Mirza, calls her
husband “the king of bad choices.” But a choice means
that more than one option or scenario exists. The film
concedes that Sanjay Dutt procured assault rifles from
the underworld, but strictly for “self defence.” (It’s a bit
like buying a T-Rex because your two-year-old wanted a
pet.) If this was the “bad choice,” what were the other
options/scenarios? Was Dutt aware of them? Did he
weigh them in his mind, wrestle with them at night? Or
did he just take the easiest way out? Without this
journalistic line of inquiry, how do we begin to
understand Sanju?

The problem with Sanju isn’t its conviction that Sanjay

Dutt was not a terrorist, and that the media is largely
responsible for this perception (though this point is
harped on endlessly, as though to suggest Sanju would
not have suffered if the newspapers had been more
responsible). The problem is that it doesn’t think it’s
important to build a watertight case to convince us that
this was indeed so. And I don’t think this is a huge ask
from a filmmaker who, in his greatest film, convinced us
that Sanjay Dutt and Mahatma Gandhi could co-exist in
the same space. I have no doubt Hirani believes what
he’s saying, but for those of us looking for some insight
into Sanjay Dutt, beyond what’s been reported over the
years, there’s practically nothing. Hirani has said, in
interviews, that he heard these great stories from Sanjay
Dutt, and was so fascinated that he had to make a movie
about it all. The opening scene of Sanju literary mirrors
this decision. We see Sanju (Ranbir Kapoor) staring into
a mirror, and promising the story of his life. His
biographer (and stand-in for Hirani), Winnie Diaz
(Anushka Sharma), eventually becomes that mirror,
reflecting back everything almost unquestioningly. She’s
a bit of a sceptic at first, but Sanju asks her to give him
an hour, and if his story isn’t the greatest tale ever told,
then she can walk away. Of course, she doesn’t.

Occasionally, someone pops in with some damning news

about Sanju, and Winnie’s blue eyes open wide in
disbelief — and she sets out to unearth the truth. (Any
halfway decent biographer would already know most of
this, from preliminary research.) Otherwise, this is
probably the easiest bio ever written, based on one man’s
narration. To millennials, Sanjay Dutt’s story may be
new, but the rest of us know it all. We know about
Nargis Dutt and her last days, which fell like a pall over
the production of Rocky. We know about the Bombay
blasts, and Sanjay Dutt’s numerous trips to jail. What
could have made these events interesting is the
psychology — the why — but Hirani, one of our sunniest
filmmakers, either doesn’t want to go there or is
incapable of going there.

The why-s of other characters are equally bewildering.

An endearing, affecting Vicky Kaushal plays Kamlesh,
Sanjay Dutt’s BFF (and this film’s Circuit), and when
Sanju sleeps with his girlfriend, he gets mad the way
we’d get mad if a roommate finished off the bar of
chocolate you’d kept in the fridge. This stretch is icky
for many reasons. The girl in question is presented as a
Madonna/whore — she’s sweet and simple when attired
in a salwar kameez, but when she slips into lingerie, she
strikes a seductive pose before Sanjay, despite knowing
Kamlesh isn’t in the room. Hirani doesn’t seem to realise
this is a problematic situation. Sanju may have laughed
about his conquests (some 350, we are told), but surely a
biographer must wonder what made him this way! Like
drugs, was this an escape? Given that his father treated
him like a little boy, did these conquests make him feel
more of a man? Did he sleep around even when married
to others? But to Hirani, this is simply material for a
laugh. And he knows his audience. In the theatre I was
in, they laughed too.

But then, it’s probably futile to expect why-s from

Hirani. Why is psychology; Hirani is more interested in
event and entertainment. He transforms a feel-bad life
into a feel-good story. Imagine comparing Sanjay Dutt to
Mahatma Gandhi: both carried weapons (a lathi, an AK-
56) but never used it. This insight comes from a fawning
biographer, someone hired before Winnie, and is
dismissed by an appalled Sanjay Dutt — but the
comparison is still out there, couched in poke-in-the-ribs
humour, and it colours the rest of the film. Someone
should tell Hirani that just because you can make a joke
about everything, it doesn’t mean you should. If he were
a provocative stand-up comedian, then this would not be
an issue. But when you’re tackling the life of a complex
individual, then these laughs feel horribly out of place.
It’s one thing to use humour to sugar-coat bitter-pill
issues like the education system or fake godmen, and
quite another to use it to amp up the adorability quotient
of a man some of us are still conflicted about.

But there’s no denying that Hirani’s audience-pleasing

instincts may be the best in the country. When his jokes
work, they land amazingly. At many places, I laughed
out loud — say, when Sunil Dutt, at the shooting spot
of Rocky, demonstrates lip-syncing, and this joke segues,
smoothly and organically, to another one built around
Gabbar Singh. And there’s a glorious scene around a
gangster played by Sayaji Shinde, one that locates
humour in life-or-death situation. In other words, if a
“Hirani-esque entertainment” is what you seek, then you
probably won’t complain. His tried-and-tested tricks,
fine-tuned over a series of blockbusters, are all in here.
The background score dictates our emotions. When a
drug peddler (an amusing Jim Sarbh, with a lisp) tempts
Sanjay Dutt with coke, the score says “something really
bad is happening here,” and later, when Sanjay Dutt is
taken away by the police, the score says “something
really sad is happening here.” You’ll also find Hirani’s
Gujarati/Parsi caricatures, his simplistic emotionalism
(using songs like “Na moonh chhupa ke jiyo” to bridge
major character arcs”), and, of course, his trademark
catchphrase. After “jadoo ki jhappi” and “all is well,” we
get “question mark.”

These “tricks” help us navigate a film without much else.

The entire first half is devoted to scenes with Nargis
(Manisha Koirala), and Sanjay Dutt’s drug use and
rehab. That’s a long time for stretches that say little more
than “Nargis was a good mother” and “drugs are hell.”
Scenes go on and on, like one where Sanju barges into
his girlfriend’s (Sonam Kapoor, as Ruby) house at night,
so he can raid her father’s liquor cabinet. Ruby gets one
of the few really affecting scenes when she leaves Sanju
for good. But what happened the next day? Did Sanju
even care she was gone? Was there a bit of heartbreak?
Was that what led to the womanising? Oh sorry, wrong
movie. I didn’t buy Paresh Rawal as Sunil Dutt (he
seems to be playing… Paresh Rawal), but he, too, pumps
genuine emotion into the film. Given his plight (a
cancer-stricken wife, two daughters to raise, a brattish
son who keeps getting into trouble), I felt I wouldn’t
have minded a biopic called Sunil. Kamlesh gets it right
when he tells Sanju, “Tere se zyada tera baap jhel raha
hai.”

I missed the movies Sanjay Dutt was part of —

Sanju makes it appear as though there was Rocky, and
then we got a Khalnayak poster, and then, Munna Bhai
MBBS. What about the milestone films that were being
made alongside these other episodes of the star’s
life: Naamand Saajan, Sadak and Vaastav? It would
have been fun to see Ranbir mimicking Sanjay Dutt in a
recreation of, say, Mera dil bhi kitna paagal hai. But
Ranbir’s performance goes beyond mimicry. He doesn’t
make the sorrows sing like he did in Rockstar because
the broad-beats writing doesn’t give the actors much to
work off of. (Sample moment: at first, Sunil Dutt is
called “terrorist ka baap,” and later, “Munna Bhai ka
baap.” Cue, misty eyes.) But perhaps this is a much
more difficult kind of acting: making people invest in
your emotional state even when the script isn’t giving
you much of a “before” or “after.” Cinematographer
Ravi Varman attempts to provide at least a little texture
— like in the drugged-out scenes where Ranbir is bathed
in harsh lights and deep shadows. But when the film
rolls to a full stop, the real Sanju is still a… question
mark.

Copyright ©2018 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may

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