I confess that I rolled my eyes when I read that Bollywood was churning out another pseudo-inspiring chowdikar film and releasing it of course on Independence Day to capitalize on the streak of fervid nationalism coursing throughout India in this very, very sad period in history.
I rolled my eyes even harder when I saw that trust fund baby, Jhanvi Kapoor, was playing India’s first female fighter pilot and that her non-sexual cavaliere servente, Karan Johar, is the film’s producer.
The film sounded like a car crash waiting to happen. I’m happy to report that it’s anything but.
Sweetly tempered, light on the maudlin and gently riveting, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl is indeed the rarest of Jai Hind films in that it also quietly conveys its patriotic message without bashing it on our heads with a sledgehammer. It makes you believe in India, its people, their resilience and unwavering, undiluted, unconditional love for their great nation without resorting to Bollywood schmaltz. I was so moved by the end of the film that I ended up penning a short letter to the Indian Air Force expressing my wish to enlist myself even though I’m not Indian and sadly, have no military experience under my belt. A few fun excursions with military uniforms notwithstanding.
Speaking of which, the pandemonium surrounding the film’s alleged negative, myopic depiction of the IAF in the film is seemingly unfounded. After reading interview after interview conducted with Gunjan-ji, it seems that the film’s portrayal is accurate and, like all things in life, deeply nuanced. Besides, just playing Devil’s advocate here, misogyny is a universal plight, not a specifically Indian one. The film does show that Gunjan is a strong, self-made woman who blossomed in a rigidly male work environment with many of her macho wacho male colleagues shunning and underestimating her in the beginning but the film also shows that some of them weren’t like that at all in that they saw her potential and helped shape her.
But I digress.
I want to talk about Jhanvi Kapoor who is shockingly good in the film. Like her late mother and other revered actresses of yesteryear, Jhanvi Kapoor emotes with her eyes. Her performance of the Indian heroine is restrained albeit powerful – so powerful that, at times, she even eclipses Pankaj Tripathi who plays her father. She is at once timid and tenacious, beautiful and unpliable but most of all she always presents Gunjanji as humble- a hero who never acts like one, as opposed to all the other patriotic Bollywood films where the hero is always exceedingly arrogant and cocky.
Take notes Akshay and Vicky Kaushal.
How’s the josh? I don’t know, why don’t you ask Jhanvi?
