[May contain spoilers, many of them.]
To call Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s An Insignificant Man a rare and fascinating gem would be overstating it a little, but it would still be the truth. The fact that it is rare is what makes it so fascinating. We have always been a rather sensitive nation when it comes to politics. We believe it is our constitutional right to shield our leaders from unwelcome criticism, to project them as patriots of the first order, and are ever so keen to see them as men and women of impeccable charm and searing intelligence. The cameras dilute them for us, making them appear more like role models and not like people. Here we see them as people, perhaps for the first time.
What puts An Insignificant Man amongst the year's best films is not just its ability to commendably capture the enormous effort and determination that went into making one of the most remarkable political feats this country has seen in the last few years, but also allow us the luxury of that thrill even if some of us are not inclined to any political party or ideology. It is foremost a story of an underdog wanting to put things right, an underdog whose fight we saw on television, in interviews, through tales and rumors told in buses and trains. But we were declined the opportunity to see what went behind closed doors and pulled curtains. He had supporters and he had haters, and each one, regardless of whether or not they put their trust in him, was curious to know what he could do. He was belligerent, passionate, and outspoken. He took names. He turned many heads. He put on quite a show. I wanted to know more, wanted to keep up with him, even though I never really saw myself supporting his brand of politics. Television reduces these stories of fascinating people to mundane thirty-minute prime-time programs, where they are talked about, dissected, and eventually, inevitably forgotten. Thousands of people tell a thousand tales on television every day and night. Some stories get lost in the shuffle. Some are elbowed out of the spotlight when the next bit of sensational news breaks. What if someone were to stitch the bits that got on television and some that didn't and give us a fully realized real-life character who waged a war against a corrupt system that never spared a chance to try to squash him?
Whether or not An Insignificant Man achieves that is largely our call. It nosily goes inside rooms where he holds meetings with his supporters and refuses to sneak out when he is at his most vulnerable, at his most confused. He wants to do good for his people but also clearly wants to be the final word on all matters. It's not as if the film doesn't take sides; this is a film that is is very much one-sided, but not one-note. It does not eulogize him. It presents him as a person who makes promises so tall that it that puts even his staunchest supporters in a spot. And this is not a film about him, but the battle he and his party fought, a lengthy and complex fight that, over its course, changed the people associated with it and even those who were not, at least directly.
The sort of access the makers get here, uncommon in this part of the world, leads to some fine little details that help us get through to the man – men – we are watching. There is a terrific moment when Kejriwal and his right-hand man, Yogendra Yadav, pensively walk out of a room, down a flurry of steps, and pause to put on their Gandhi caps, a symbol that has come to be associated with the middle-class, before meeting swarms of supporters. It's a moment worthy of a quiet chuckle; in politics, where the absurd is almost never noticed, an identity is essential. They slip into it moments before something important. Even when giving an interview with his trademark bluntness to a television channel after walking out of a film inspired by his movement, he nervously fiddles with the corner of his shirt when the camera moves to the reporter. These details, as trivial and throwaway-like they might seem, make the experience more human, more accessible than any television prime-time program would.
Among other things An Insignificant Man also allows us the opportunity to laugh at not just our politicians, whom we have entrusted to run our gullible country, not just our institutions, but also at the absurdities that we find in every nook and corner of this place. These bits are presented without much gusto, as if they are inseparable to the Indian political scene. My favorite involves two processions of political rivals crossing each other on the road quite coincidentally, leading to an uncomfortable stillness before their supporters erupt with chants. The two rivals have lambasted each other in political rallies and television programs, and now find it a bit awkward to find the courtesy to acknowledge each other openly. They do, of course, but the sequence is an example of how satire finds a way to entrench itself in Indian politics.
Ultimately, An Insignificant Man arrives at a known conclusion, but it leaves us with a satisfied feeling of having watched a narrative that the papers didn't quite capture. There have been countless films over the years that have discreetly highlighted how we failed as a people. An Insignificant Man has something else on its mind. It shows us how we succeeded.
[Not For Reproduction]
