The myopic biopic that's Sanju

As far as I can recollect, Sanju is a first: a biopic on a living Bollywood actor. And it was doable, presumably with the tacit consent of Sanjay Dutt, who at the age of 58, is currently starring in half-a-dozen projects.
Evidently, the actor, whose beleaguered life could well yield at least two to three more feature films, gave his go-ahead to Sanju because it has been co-written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who resurrected his career with Munna Bhai MBBS (2003) and its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006).
For the end credit titles, the actor even fetches up to participate in a jig in the company of the biopic's lead star Ranbir Kapoor. How's that for wholeheartedly approving the efforts of the Sanju team?
But can the film, which opened to packed houses across the nation, be called a biopic? Yes and no, depending on your point of view. Hirani and Co cherry-pick sections from Sanjay Dutt's life, at the expense of either deleting or marginalising the women who made their entries and exits from his life, impacting his mental stability. For that point alone, at best the outcome strikes you as a selective memoir.

The absence of his first wife, the late actress Richa Sharma, and of their daughter Trishala, are particularly conspicuous. Omitted, too, are even any passing references to Tina Munim (the heroine in Rocky, his debut film), the blizzard of rumours about his liaison with Madhuri Dixit, and his short-lived marriage to Rhea Pillai. As for his real-life sisters, Priya and Namrata, who stood by him through crises galore, they are relegated to the sidelines as hapless onlookers.
Now, you may argue that all the significant dramatis personae couldn't have possibly been packed into 160-odd minutes. Right. But this is at the expense of introducing the totally incredulous whiz biographer, one Winnie Diaz, who doesn't seem to have even done her homework on Wikipedia about the Bollywood star's trials and tribulations which have been extensively chronicled over the decades.
This Ms Winnie, played by a frizzy-haired Anushka Sharma, is, in fact, unintentionally funny. At one point, on learning about the malignant factoids behind the actor's lengthy jail sentence, she dabs away at her eyes to wipe non-existent tears. As for Ruby, the first girlfriend (Sonam Kapoor) whom Sanju loved and lost because of his wayward behaviour, that entire track is guilty of employing her father, played by Boman Irani, as a ditzy old man straight out of a comic strip. Parsis are once again caricatured.
Manyata, the actor's third wife, as incarnated by Dia Mirza, is wooden. Gratifyingly, the cameos by Sonam Kapoor, and by Manisha Koirala as mother Nargis Dutt, are remarkably restrained. Needless to emphasise, both the characters could have been assigned more footage. Or, should I say substance?
In the event, the film hinges essentially on the see-sawing emotional relationship of Sanjay Dutt with his father Sunil Dutt (Paresh Rawal), and with a New York-located NRI friend Kamlesh (Vicky Kaushal), endowed with a quaint Gujarati accent to entice chortles.
Result: the screenplay is split into two distinct halves. Before the intermission, the focus is on the actor's Herculean struggle to kick his drug addiction. His vulnerability to "bad company" was essentially at fault, it seems. The second half is devoted to graphing the charges levelled of involvement in terrorism during the 1992-93 communal riots in Mumbai.
Rajkumar Hirani and his team are entitled to advance their subjective take. The overt intention is to draw the viewer closer to the heart and mind of an actor who, from the very outset, couldn't quite cope up either with his private or professional life. In this objective, Hirani's cleansing endeavour is successful. The milieu of Bollywood ever since the 1980s is also recreated deftly.
The points which niggle majorly are the two ghoulish villains of the Sanjay Dutt saga. A Parsi friend called Zubin Mistry, performed by Jim Sarbh in snarling close-ups, is held responsible for inducting the actor into a world of narcotics. This snarl-demon also strives to discourage the expert wordsmith Winnie from agreeing to write the Dutt biography. How strange is that? Moreover, the media - especially a smarmy newspaper editor - is charged with sensationalising the allegations of terrorism. Why a question mark had to be attached to a headline, becomes a repetitive refrain.
As far as I know, having covered the Sanjay Dutt story as a reporter for The Times of India, newspapers in the majority had unwaveringly supported Sunil Dutt's campaign for the release of his son on bail. But, well, media-bashing is B-town's favourite sport, isn't it? Neither can they live with it, nor without it.
Regrettably, towards the finale, a paparazzo who's desperate to get a shot of the actor emerging from jail, is depicted as a venal creature. Why? The paparazzi, in general, has been extra-partial to their Sanjay 'baba', and he has gone out of his way to cooperate with them.
With its many cons and some pros, Sanju is still worth a watch for Ranbir Kapoor in the title role. The 35-year-old actor, through his 11-year-old career span, has demonstrated that he's incapable of delivering a disappointing performance. Although drug abuse was a part of his persona in Rockstar, he doesn't repeat himself here at all. Slipping into the skin of a complex role, he makes Dutt Jr accessible and credible for the viewer.
Some have maintained that Ranveer Singh would have been the ideal choice. Salman Khan has gone on record to state that Sanjay Dutt should have played himself, especially in the later sections of the film. No way. Ranbir rocks the screen, and irons out the screenplay's bumps, folds and seams. This quality could be once detected in portrayals by Dilip Kumar, Sanjeev Kumar and Naseeruddin Shah always, and by Amitabh Bachchan occasionally.
Ably supported by Paresh Rawal and Vicky Kaushal, Ranbir's is the most inspired and deeply-felt enactment of the year so far. Here, then, is a prime case study of a flawless performance in a flawed film.
wknd@khaleejtimes.com