Dhurandhar: The Revenge

German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl wasn’t the only person making propaganda for the Third Reich. She is remembered simply because she was the best. By that measure, director Aditya Dhar may be painted with a similar brush, because while his fellow Bollywood opportunists choose to spoonfeed their message, Dhar deploys his through subterfuge. Overlong, gratuitously violent, and brimming with a self-indulgence that borders on arrogance, his latest film, Dhurandhar: The Revenge, ought to be canceled on artistic grounds alone before even a word is spoken about its problematic politics. The film serves as a mouthpiece for India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and not, as it claims on several occasions, a bipartisan story about the bravery of true patriots.

A little more than 40 years ago, cartoonist Alison Bechdel formulated The Bechdel Test, which, over the decades, has become an essential metric to evaluate the representation of women in media, with special emphasis being laid on film. The Bechdel Test has a simple ask — to assess whether a piece of performing art has (a) at least two named women and (b) whether the female characters in it engage in a conversation (or more) on a topic which is something other than that centred on a man. Many films, since then, even while not being feminist in the classical sense of the term (or female-centric, according to commonly-used parlance), have proved to be worthy candidates of the test. Many others have not, despite their on-the-surface female presence, been able to pass muster. But no film, at least in recent times, would perhaps have failed it as spectacularly as Dhurandhar: The Revenge.

Never before has cinema exercised such formidable influence as it does in the present moment, particularly within India. Technological sophistication has refined nearly every facet of filmmaking; yet, in this relentless pursuit of scale and spectacle, a measure of restraint often appears to have been relinquished. The industry now stands at a curious intersection where artistic ambition, public sentiment, and institutional interests frequently converge. Films, filmmakers, and narratives alike are championed or contested with equal fervour, often within frameworks that extend beyond the purely cinematic. Such an environment, while undeniably vibrant for audiences, inevitably shapes the nature of the stories being told.

Rare is a film which creates so much hype for both the right and wrong reasons. Rarely does the second part come so quickly after its first outing. It was only three months ago that ‘Dhurandhar’ had its big screen outing, swept audiences off their feet and broke all conceivable records. The sequel to the Aditya Dhar directorial, like its predecessor, is likely to divide critics on ideological lines. Yes, all art is political, only ‘Dhurandhar’ wears its politics on its sleeve with glee, and unapologetically. Not only is Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive given a clean chit, his swearing-in as the Prime Minister dots the film. In between, a jihadi is forced to utter “Bharat mata ki jai”. A forceful reminder of how Hindus are no cowards is interwoven even though our hero is a Sikh.

Early in this maximalist’s dream of sensory overload, when the background voice of a girl menacingly provokes: ‘you are not ready for this’, one wants to tell her actually, one is over-prepared. As it turns out, the sequel attempts to outdo the original in volume and venom, perhaps at the expense of the original’s narrative weight. One went for a story, returned with a migraine and a beard. Dhar is the master of frame and fireworks, but he loses sight of the clock and control. Perhaps, deliberately. Channelling the mood of the moment, when the world is itching for war, he feeds the bloodlust of a section of the masses, ensuring a box-office bonanza but setting a dangerous precedent.