I watched the movie yesterday. I had heard about it for the last few months but hadn't seen the trailer that was released a few weeks earlier. Wanted to see the whole movie and not the trailer which would have biased me. Being an engineer by qualification and an industrial and quality engineer by profession, grabbing the scientific terms and the technical details wouldn't be too difficult, I thought. How wrong I was! It is not as if I understood the terms 'thrust', 'pressure', 'combustion', etc and how they impact the design framework of rockets, but the way it was presented in the movie made me realize that the makers had taken some pains to ensure that even though the terms may not be understood by the lay people, at least its importance in the context of the movie would not be lost on many. Kudos to Maddy for making that happen.
The challenges at work that Nambi Narayanan faced in ISRO and the obstacles that he had to cross to learn the latest technology in France and bring the rocket parts from Russia later were captured wonderfully well; though one could not help but agree to what Suriya (I watched the movie in Chennai - Tamil dialogues - some issues regarding that will be discussed later) remarked in the movie, 'it looked like a James Bond movie!" Whether Nambi Narayanan really did imitate James Bond or Maddy did with cinematic liberty, only Nambi Narayanan and his close associates can answer! That doesn't take away anything from the movie, though.
[Warning: Spoilers ahead - not much though]
Being a biopic on the rocket scientist, it is obvious that the character of Nambi Narayanan would be the central focus of the movie. Any comment that other characters were given short shrift doesn't go well with what the director wished to convey in the given 150 minutes (approximately). I cannot but remark that Meena (Simran in the movie) was superb in the time she got in the movie and her performance as the troubled wife of Nambi Narayanan was heart-wrenching. Maddy really lived the role, and as Nambi Narayanan has remarked in his interviews, it is as if God ordained that the two should meet and that Maddy should not only be making the movie, but also act as Nambi Narayanan. Other roles of Kalam, Vikram Sarabhai, Unni, U R Rao, etc were capably performed by the actors.
The production values and the art direction, especially in scenes where the team tests engines in France, were wonderful.
By and large, the whole movie wasn't heavy on emotions. But they came to the fore during the scenes where Nambi Narayanan returns home from jail only to find his wife under severe depression. At the same time, the public is seen raising slogans against Nambi Narayanan and throwing stones at his house with the police mutely standing by - as if complicit in the whole sordid affair. That small scene plus where the CBI officer informs his superior about the role of Gopal, the Police Inspector, shows where and how the conspiracy may have been hatched.
I watched the movie in Chennai and if at all I have some issue, it is that it looked very odd to me to hear Tamil being spoken by the foreign characters and even the characters like Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan. I can only speak about myself here and I would have preferred the characters to speak in the language that was spoken there with subtitles helping the viewers understand what is being spoken. With so many webseries nowadays where that is the norm, it shouldn't have been too difficult to get this organised.
On the whole a wonderful movie and a rich addition to the growing collection of the best Indian movies of the millenium. My only wish is that Nambi Narayanan's wish - knowing who hatched the conspiracy and punishing them - is fulfilled soon!
