Sanjay Dutt and Rajkumar Hirani vouched early on that Sanju would not glorify the troubled life of the actor.It is indeed true.But what they did not tell you is that they would be justifying his actions, whilst not holding anything back about his controversial career and life in general.Only a storyteller like Raj Kumar Hirani could have pulled this film off and one has to admit that he has made an interesting affair of it.Sanju is an emotionally engaging film for an unsuspecting viewer by a brilliant director who has made a biopic on the life of a collaborator and friend as he knew him.That’s how i saw it.It’s the Sanjay Dutt, Hirani has sat down with.Hirani films have always been a weird breed ,so to speak.They’re not sleazy at all by bollywood standards but you get to hear quite a few balatkari jokes too.I am not complaining, trust me.In here too is an extended dialogue sequence which uses wordplay for laughs.Yeah, there are quite a few laughs for a biopic on a person who has had a fair dash of tragedy in his life.
The movie focuses on his debut days and then moves on to his addiction days and then to his troubled days with the law.It steers clear of any references to Sanjay Dutt’s relationships with his colleagues in the Industry. Hirani and obviously the Dutt family had one agenda with this film, that’s to try and erase the stigma that the TADA allegations brought down upon him.The biographer character played by Anushka Sharma could very well be Hirani himself.Now that I have watched the film, I cant but help feel that the biopic should actually have been on Sunil Dutt.The man has led an exemplary life as an actor and a politician.The only time he had to bow was again for his son.But then there are people who believe that his son had to pay for his political stands too.If Anjan Srivastav is who I think he is, Hirani has thrown a political punch for his pal.Sanju spends most of its time telling the tale of Sanjay’s relationships with his father and his friends, who are portrayed as strong influences in his life, for good and for bad.Paresh Rawal functions as Sunil Dutt and Manisha Koirala is Nargis.Vicky Kaushal is the most endearing character in the film and in Dutt’s life, says Hirani and we want to believe him too. In fact Kaushal’s character is what Hirani uses to his heart’s content to hook and bait the audiences throughout this movie and he is immensely successful at that.
This movie is unlikely to be loved by the media as it indulges in more than a fair share of media bashing, unabashedly.There is a whole song at the end that basically is a message to the media that Baba doesn’t care anymore.Next to friends, the media is held responsible for making things difficult for the star.But then, when has the media spared anyone ? And when you are the self confessed king of bad choices the media is even more interested.For all his Khalnayak image in the popular imagination Sanju Baba ultimately turns out to be a privileged kid with a heart of gold who refused to grow up.Still the underprivileged, destitute, disadvantaged masses who makes up most his fan base in a country like ours, loves him for just that. And Hirani punctuates it like he knows best.
gopakumarpurushothaman 