G. D. N.

When storytellers say they have made a film to inspire people — red flag! Abort! For the kind of people who make movies to inspire others are, perhaps, those least capable of evoking inspiration — or worse, they feel like they are catering to a baseline stupidity. People aren’t inspired by formulas, or at least people with half a mind aren’t. At best, it can make them simper in theater halls, whacked over their heads with a background score that can even turn a dead man into a pound of goose flesh. But when you return to the thick materiality of your life, you forget that goosefleshing. To truly inspire people, you have to recognise that nothing moves mountains like honesty, like humanity. The best biopics — a genre we are facing a glut in, including Madhavan’s limp Rocketry: The Nambi Effect (2022) — know that ideas can never do the heavy lifting of a life well lived. At best, it can serve as a placeholder.

Men and machines. It’s a love story that defies logic. The soulful 2024 Tamil film Meiyazhagan explored the relationship between the protagonist and his cycle, and what the vehicle really meant to him. “In a way, this cycle coming into our lives changed it completely,” a teary-eyed Karthi tells Arvind Swamy in the film. G.D.N kickstarts proceedings with this fascinating emotion. A young Gopalaswamy Doraiswamy Naidu (GDN) follows an Englishman around for two years — not because he wanted to be friends, but because he was besotted with the motorcycle that he was riding. A few minutes into the film, a star-stuck Dorai asks the Englishman (who he ironically also calls ‘Dorai’ which means ‘master’) if he can sell him the motorcycle.

Did you know that India’s best innovator, Gopalaswamy Duraiswamy Naidu aka GD Naidu, hailing from Coimbatore was branded a lunatic, terrorist and tax dodger? G.D.N. opens with a group of teachers belonging to a textbook committee debating whether he deserves a chapter in the school syllabus. Director Krishnakumar Ramakumar’s G.D.N. then takes us on a journey to the early 1910s when GD Naidu discovered his passion for everything mechanical. It’s his love for motors that led him to manufacture the first electric motor in India, among his other discoveries in various sectors. But, innovators like him always face adversaries at every step. GD Naidu was no exception.