When Kangana Ranaut announced that she would direct Emergency, many felt it might be another weapon to whip the Congress in the election year to limit the memory of the grand old party’s rule to the 21-month blot that Indira Gandhi inflicted on democracy in 1975. After a long wait and multiple controversies, it turns out that the artist in Kangana has prevailed over the fledgling politician in her to create an ambitious biopic of the former Prime Minister, where the Emergency period is a dark chapter in her storied journey from Anand Bhawan to 1 Safdarjung Road. However, in an attempt to find the roots of dictatorial insecurities in Indira’s psyche, the writers (Kangana and Ritesh Shah) tie the screenplay into knots. The muddled gaze results in a spiritual cousin of The Accidental Prime Minister where a biopic vilifies or dilutes its subject to serve the present dispensation.

In Emergency, Kangana Ranaut plays Indira Gandhi who plays Kangana Ranaut. Let me explain. Ranaut performs as the former Prime Minister of India when the politician is flawed, cruel, paranoid, a nepotism hire, power-hungry, guilty, and the mother of Sanjay Gandhi. Her voice becomes high-pitched, uneven and shaky in these parts. But Indira Gandhi seems to perform as Ranaut when the woman is defiant, patriotic, headstrong, resilient, reverential towards the opposition (Janata Party leaders Jayaprakash Narayan and Atal Bihari Vajpayee), and the mother of the nation. Her voice becomes firm, furious and confident in these parts.

The Kangana Ranaut directorial is a fictional account of Indira Gandhi’s personal life experiences as a daughter, wife, politician and a woman of the nation. Led by Kangana in the leading role, the film does take creative liberties but impresses with writing that provides full-circle moments and character-focused direction. It is important to emphasise that the film is not a biopic or documentation of the real political personality but fiction an account of her life. The makers before the film began emphasized the film is based on two books. Emergency begins with Indira’s childhood and how she was inspired by her grandfather’s vision and understanding of Indraprastha, a play in ancient Indian history and its equivalent Delhi in today’s time where a constant struggle remains for power. Since childhood Indira focuses on winning the big battles and the same remains throughout her political career. The film also gives glimpses of her personal life her little interactions with her husband and her children through flashbacks and presently as her career progressed. The first half feels rushed as the story progresses through her political career with only a few incidents in the foreground. From the death of her father, her feeling betrayed by him to taking control of the party.

The much-delayed, riding-on-controversies ‘Emergency’, written and directed by Kangana Ranaut, is finally out. The long disclaimer states that the biographical feature ‘draws information from the life and real life events of one of the most respected politicians and former prime ministers, Smt Indira Gandhi’. And then it follows up the standard caveat of ‘creative liberties’ having been taken in the dramatisation, with a most un-standard sentence: ‘the filmmakers fully acknowledge and respect other perspectives and viewpoints’. This unexpected dissonant note pretty much sets the tone of this film in which Ranaut has played the role of Indira Gandhi, which swings from showing her as a young woman growing into an autocratic leader, to a weak, vacillating mother under the influence of Sanjay, her ‘bigda hua beta’, and back again.

It is a misleading title. When it takes off with little Indira in her grandfather’s house at Anand Bhavan in 1929 where her early dislike for aunt Vijayalakshmi Pandit is established, and it tracks her until the day she was assassinated in 1984, it’s not just about the biggest mistake of her political life. What writer-director Kangana Ranaut has made is a full-fledged, political bio-documentary, detailing the defining moments of Indira Gandhi’s public life, before and after the Emergency that she infamously clamped on the country in 1975. In seeking to understand the person behind the Emergency, Ranaut and her writers Tanvi Kesari Pasumarthy, Ritesh Shah and Jayant Sinha, bring to the fore the vulnerabilities of the PM with the iron facade.

Kangana Ranaut’s much-talked-about film Emergency finally hits theatres across the country where Ranaut directs and acts as former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and retells an era considered one of the darkest phases in the Indian democracy. But re-telling the era of Emergency (1975-77) authentically, without bias, is not easy and Ranaut’s film slips ever so often, making Emergency the movie quite a passable affair. While the film primarily focuses on the 21-month-long emergency period, it also tries to showcase Indira Gandhi’s rise to power. From being termed as Gungi Gudiya (dumb doll) who grew out of her father, Pandit Nehru’s towering shadow to becoming the megalomaniac, despondent leader who saw nothing wrong in imposing arbitrary bans on the basic rights of citizens during the emergency, Indira Gandhi had quite a journey. Emergency tries to capture all this and tries to even humanise the authoritative leader, making her look flawed and even vulnerable at times- unsure of her own decisions. But Ranaut, who also serves as the writer of the film, never really delves deeper into the incidents and loosely strings important political events into a 2.5-hour-long film.

There were only two things I asked of Emergency. One was to literally see the presses stop (we’re shown this twice). The second was for Sam Manekshaw to call Indira Gandhi ‘sweetie’, like Vicky Kaushal does in Sam Bahadur (2023). This, surprisingly, wasn’t fulfilled. I’m certain the makers were aware of the legend of the army chief saying this to the prime minister, but chose to leave it out. Its absence says a lot about this curious film suspended between opposing impulses. Emergency isn’t what I was expecting. For starters, its focus isn’t the Emergency; the events of 1975-77 take up, at a rough estimate, half an hour in a 146-minute film. Instead, this is very much a Indira Gandhi biopic, progressing in linear fashion from her childhood to her assassination in 1984. Since it’s Kangana Ranaut—a BJP MP who has made a number of incendiary statements about minorities and protestors—directing, producing and playing Indira, I was expecting a crazed hatchet job. This too doesn’t happen.