Gunjan Saxena (2020) [Movie Review]

 

Dir: Sharan Sharma

Starring: Jhanvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Angad Bedi

Dur: 1 hr 52 mins

Genre: Biography

Rating: 6.5/10

The film aims at depicting the tough life of India’s first lady Air Force pilot: Gunjan Saxena. Gunjan served in the Kargil War of 1999. She came from a family that had patriotic blood as her father was an Army officer. Her brother also subsequently joined the army. Gunjan, uncharacteristic of most Indian girls, dreamt of becoming a pilot from her childhood. She was very intelligent and wanted with all her being to fly a plane and rule the skies. The film flippantly portrays how a young Gunjan prepares herself to achieve her goal by wearing goggles all the time in order to protect her eyes. The film could have done without such silliness but it is tolerable. Besides the young actress playing young Gunjan is adorable.

The film slightly exaggerates things in order to dramatize the story and while this adds to the drama it does not shed kind light on the reality of the armed forces. Although there was a hue and cry by the armed forces regarding their portrayal in the film, I don’t hesitate to believe that there was certainly quite some truth in the reel portrayal. Gunjan is the only female selected from a class of candidates which is definitely fishy all the more since the ad specifically stated that this was a selection camp for female aspirants. She however, not the only woman in the training academy but is the only woman to be invested as an officer. One can imagine the natural difficulty she faced while being the only woman in an otherwise male unit. Woman officers from the Indian Air Force (IAF) spoke out against the film saying that it unduly heightened male-female tension. The IAF was the first branch to open itself up to women which is an achievement in itself. But that does not take much away from the film which in my opinion, attempts to drive a knife through patriarchy in the Indian mindset and system.

Jhanvi is unsurprisingly a failure. Her facial expression, reminiscent of Abhishek Kapoor vary from resting face to slightly surprised to sad resting face which basically looks very similar. Pankaj, who plays Gunjan’s father is the real treat. Karan Johar who produced this film needs to learn his lesson and stop encouraging nepotism. I wouldn’t call the film bad despite Jhanvi’s obvious failure to do a standard job. It is quite an encouraging film and the ending holds the power to wet your face. It’s really worth a watch as a family.

Official Trailer

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Great Grand Masti 2 (2016) (Movie Review)

Image
Dir: Indra Kumar Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani, Urvashi Rautela Dur: 2 hrs 10 mins Genre: Comedy Rating: 1/10 Comment: The jokes, gestures and costumes are sexually suggestive. An absolute waste of time. “What an opening line”, you might think. But to say otherwise would be an absolute lie. This film is in fact, a great grand waste of time. It’s horrible whichever way you look at it. The story is weak and thrives on cheap thrills and sorry jokes. The actresses are no doubt eye-catching but the rest is all a blur. The comedy is in fact tragedy and the film attempts to play on the basest desires of man. It’s unbelievable that actors like Riteish and Vivek would do such a film. I am not a big fan of bollywood but I still feel bad when I see bollywood making films like these. All of a sudden, I see that sex is being propagated through Indian cinema. The views of sex are changing and filmmakers and actors are not hesitating to take on unconvent
Read more

St. Joseph: A Father after the Father's Heart (Book Review)

Image
  St. Joseph: A Father after the Father’s Heart , Hyderabad: Don Bosco Publishing House, 2021, Rs. 150, pp. 240. The book is a compilation of articles from various authors writing about qualities of St. Joseph. They have used the litany of St. Joseph as an index and have put together articles on each of the invocations. All the contributors are Salesians from different parts of India but there a couple of contributors from abroad as well. The book lends itself to be a souvenir of the Year of St. Joseph that Pope Francis declared. Let me start out by commenting on the quality of production. The paper is of good quality and so is the design and layout. It is neat and has an attractive cover. Coming to the content, it gets rather repetitive but that is understandable considering that there is so little Biblical foundation for an exposition of St. Joseph. The articles often reference Pope Francis’ letter Patris Corde and extensively utilize Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortatio
Read more

A Day with Don Bosco

                              Don Bosco was declared the Patron of Youth by Pope John Paul II in 1989. He received his mission: to be Father to the young, in a dream at the tender age of nine. He nurtured this call throughout his life and never wasted an opportunity to gather boys and direct them to God. He did not do this as a spiritual director, (at least no at first!) but rather as a friend, a companion and a seminarian. As a young boy, he would attract youngsters with his magic tricks, tightrope skills, games etc and then get them to recite the rosary with him or recount to them the Sunday sermon (which he remembered thanks to his prodigious memory). Already then, he had ingeniously found a way to combine religion and entertainment. His entertainment was necer for entertainment sake but rather a façade or an advertisment for religious instruction. Even as a young priest, boys would long for more than just a wekkly encounter with him. They loved him and found in him a friend w
Read more