Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran Trailer Review: It Is Insipid, Uninspiring!

None other than  John Abraham  with a moustache (probably  to look like  a distinguished  scientist) playing one  of  the scientists who exploded those series of historic nucleurtest-explosions at  Pokhran on 11 May 1998.

In a voiceover brimming with selfimportance we  are  told that this is a  historic happening that needs to be revisited  in the same spirit  that the 1983 World Cup was celebrated.So here  is  the underlining assumption: that this film will put the Pokhran test-exploisions on  the  map of renown  on a par with the  1983 World Cup.

Kapil Dev Paaji,  you have competition!!

There  is just one hitch here: cricket and Pokhran are worlds apart. How many of today’s potential moviegoers are  interested in  knowing what really happened at  Pokhran on  May 11, 1998? And how capable  is this  film of shedding illuminating light on the events  that led  to India becoming a nucleur state?

The answer  to both the  questions is  not very encouraging. Not  only are today’s  audiences disinterested  in the subject, the  treatment of  the  theme and  the packaging of  the plot in Parmanu smacks of amateurishness and self-glorification.

Not one  shot  or frame in the trailer seems  to do justice  to the momentous events  in that small sleepy village of Rajashthan that shook the world.

It certainly seems to have shaken the  Americans in the film. And  not in a good way.There are shots of  Caucasian  junior artistes(as ‘American’ as  Apu is  ‘Indian’ in The Simpsons) fuming and foaming around their mouths bellowing, ‘We must stop them.’

I think the  trailer  is  trying to tell  us that the Americans felt enormously threatened  when India exploded those test bombs. As threatened as the Britishers were when Mahatma Gandhi undertook the  Salt March.

Move over, Ben. There is  competition from John.

The sequences  showing the nuclear devices being assembled look pretty tacky from  afar.I  sincerely hope I am  wrong. But so far what we see in the trailer  is  an extremely vapid recreation of  a historic contingency that reeks of  self-glorification for its  leading man.

I don’t mind seeing  history being manned and  augmented by screen heroism. But when the basic situation is compromised by  a complete  poverty of  imagination and insight and when the endeavour is designed to  play up only one of  the dramatis personae,   then it’s  time to worry.

Incidentally  the  director of Parmanu Abhishek Sharma earlier made a satire on Osama bin Laden. Is this  also a satire by any chance?