Seeing the trailer of Srikanth, which is about the eponymous visually-impaired man who became India's first blind MIT student, you would have expected the film to be about how he beat the odds to make it. Srikanth, in the event, turns out to be exactly that.
The Good
- Earnest and sincere
- Rajkummar Rao
- Inspiring
The Bad
- No layering
- Cloying melodrama
The problem with biopics is if you know the story, then what is there to sink your teeth into? Of course, they can be inspiring and arousing. But beyond that, for a good biopic to work the directors and writer have to be extremely creative to make the story work as a standalone mainstream cinema — in that, it has to be interesting.
The 2001 Hollywood offering A Beautiful Mind, about the life of mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, is a good case in point on how to make a biopic, even if it be on an esoteric subject like game theory. But A Beautiful Mind was probably helped by the fact that Nash was a complex genius, and his life story had enough twists and engrossing bits that lent itself to celluloid re-creation.
Srikanth, on the other hand, on Srikanth Bolla, the first international visually-impaired student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and founder of Bollant Industries, a recycled packaging paper company, with prominent investors like former president APJ Abdul Kalam and Ratan Tata, is relatively constrained by the fact that the eponymous hero’s life, even if mighty inspiring and courageous, is little short on drama.
And director Tushar Hiranandani and his writers also don’t seem keen to go for a more challenging narrative. They prefer to take the simple and straightforward route, and Srikanth is a well-intentioned movie without satisfying you creatively.
That is a shame, as Srikanth’s story is mighty moving. And Tushar Hiranandani himself is fresh out of directing the web series Scam 2003: The Telgi Story. That was not a biopic but based on a real-life scandal based on one man’s shenanigans. Perhaps the scam in itself provided the masala needed for cinematic reproduction. Srikanth is a more earnest man; what you see is what you get. And the film turns out exactly the same and is salvaged mostly by Rajkummar’s sincerity. That was, of course, always on the cards.
Hiranandani fills the narrative with a lot of emotional content. Some seem manipulative and decidedly aimed to tug the viewers’ heartstrings. The story, as we said, is simple. It is the journey of Srikanth (Rajkummar Rao), son of Damodar Bolla (Srinivas Beesetty) and Venkatamma Bolla (Anusha Nuthula) in the Telugu land of Andhra. Srikanth is interestingly named after the swashbuckling Indian cricketer Krishnamachari Srikanth. But this Srikanth has no luck as he is born blind, and his dad gives up on him. Well, almost. His main source of support is his teacher at the blind school, Devika (Jyotika), who keeps his dreams alive.
Srikanth, who is smart in studies, wants to pursue his ambitions, but the system doesn’t allow him to. So, he has to wage a battle to pursue his ambitions. At every step, there is a hurdle for this visually challenged person, and he has to dig deep into his emotional and mental recesses to come out successfully. Swathi (Alaya F), who reaches out to him through social media because she is intrigued by his story of struggle, helps him along the way.
While Hiranandani amplifies the emotional coefficient (lines like “the apple of my father’s eye but without eyesight” are aimed at pathos but sound cringe), Rajkummar’s histrionics provide the right amount of realism. He makes it agreeable. He doesn’t play for your sympathy. Instead, he works for the character’s dignity. And a big hurrah to him for that.
The real-life Srikanth’s story was, verily, he came, he didn’t see, but he still conquered. The film version doesn’t do the conquer bit that well, but good intentions and acting make up for the shortcomings.