5 Biopics that deserves to be told

Despite having celebrated 100 years of Indian Cinema, we are yet to grow up as an industry to be
looked up to. For the record, we make the highest number of movies in the entire world, but if we scrutinize the quality of our movies with those of our contemporaries, we fail.

The reason for this is the lack of effort put in on the script or say screenplay for that matter. All mainstream Hindi movies can broadly be classified into

a) Love Story, where there will be inequality (caste, creed, religion) between hero and the heroine and the whole theatrics.
b) Revenge Story, where the parents of the hero will be killed by the villain and the hero will search for him for 3 epic hours and despite meeting villain every 15-20 minutes, it will only to be disclosed in the climax that he was the penultimate guy.
c) Honest-Person-Corrupt-Society, where the actor is the most honest person of the world and everyone else is corrupt (No, we are not talking about Arvind Kejriwal[Politics is the current mood of the nation, couldn’t help bring it here :P]) and the actor will fight till the end to change the system.

If one looks at the west, some of the awe-inspiring movies are either based on novels or some real person. Hindi Cinema has also tried to look beyond the traditional story subjects and movies like Vicky Donor, Paan Singh Tomar, Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur are to name a few. Biopics like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag brought real life story into contention but no takers for recently released Manjunath brought out the fact that things have been better since the past decade but we have still a long way to go.

Today, we at Filmistani, try to give our filmmakers some individuals on whom if a movie is made, will be out of the box and also inspire the cine-goers.

#5: Kalpana Chawla: Wouldn’t the story of a girl child from Haryana who managed to break into the ranks in NASA, and the tragic disaster that followed, would make it great on the celluloid.

I feel goose bumps by her famous quote “When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system." I am sure that it can inspire whole lot of generation to be another Kalpana Chawla and also it can be India’s answer to Gravity.

#4: Kishore Kumar: While there is no doubt on how famous the singer is, there are many facets of him, which are still unknown to us.

For example, He apparently made Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, hoping it would fail commercially. He wanted to show losses in his income, and thus avoid paying a huge income tax to the authorities. So he made it, and waited eagerly for it to collapse. However, it surprisingly went on to become box-office success. He was so disgusted with this that he gave all its rights to his secretary. He is said to have been paranoid about not being paid. I am sure that if a biopic is made on his life, it will be both entertaining and inspiring.

#3: Neerja Bhanot: For starters, who don’t know her, let me give some brief. She was a flight attendant for Pan Am, based in Mumbai, India, and was murdered while saving passengers from terrorists on board the hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 in 1986.

Posthumously, she became the youngest recipient of India's highest civilian award for bravery, the Ashok Chakra. Although this incident has been depicted in HindI Movies like “Ye Dil Aashiqana” and “Zameen” but none of them has touched upon her story (as her marriage turned sour following dowry pressure) which deserves to be told on Big Screen. I am sure it can inspire many people.

#2: Yuvraj Singh: Oh Boy, his life is a big story. His parents divorced and his mother raised him. When he won the National U-14 Roller Skating Championship, his father threw away the medal and told him to forget skating and concentrate on cricket.

Having an illustrious career with 2 world cup victories to his credit, he was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his left lung, he went for a treatment and he fought back bravely. His story will surely inspire millions.

#1: Sanjay Gandhi: He was the elder son of Indira Gandhi and before his demise in 1980; he made his mark in Indian Politics. Maruti Udyog, today India's premier automobile manufacturing corporation, was founded by Sanjay Gandhi, but the company did not produce any vehicles during his lifetime.

More so, he was criticized because of the test model. It was said that during the Emergency he virtually ran India along with his friends. It was also quipped that Sanjay Gandhi had total control over his mother and that the government was run by the PMH (Prime Minister House) rather than the PMO (Prime Minister Office). Such was his aura that some theory suggests that his mother apparently got him killed in a plane crash. He initiated a widespread compulsory sterilization program to limit population growth. He escaped an assassination attempt in 1977. Making a movie on Sanjay Gandhi would be tough given all the controversies he has been associated with. As Mr. Anurag Kashyap very famously said in one of his interviews that you can make movies in India on every subject except Politics, it looks like there will be no takers to this story in the near future.

P.S. We have not suggested so as to who will play these roles because there is no formula when it comes to portray any real life character. I mean, who would have thought that Farhan Akhtar will portray Milkha Singh so beautifully. A very classic example would be Heath Ledger. The whole batman fan community (including me :P) were upset when Nolan decide Ledger to cast as Joker. Rest is History.

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