Release date (India):
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December 5, 2014
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Director:
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Ravi Kumar
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Cast:
Language:
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Rajpal Yadav,
Tannishtha Chatterjee, Martin Sheen, Kal Penn, Mischa Barton, Manoj Joshi,
Joy Sengupta, Fagun Thakrar, Vineet Kumar, David Brooks
Hindi
|
Bhopal: A Prayer For Rain is an account of the events in the run-up
to the 1984 gas leak that killed thousands in the Central Indian town of the
title. Over 10,000 people are estimated to have died and countless maimed in
what is considered the world’s worst human-made industrial disaster. This film aims
at chronicling the negligence that led to the tragedy, fuelled by collusion
between the US’ Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and Indian politicians.
The dead are not just statistics.
Bhopal brings us living, breathing
human beings in the form of the impoverished rickshaw-puller Dilip (Rajpal
Yadav) who takes up a job in the UCC factory, his wife Leela (Tannishtha
Chatterjee), the local journalist Motwani (Kal Penn) who is determined to expose
UCC for storing dangerous chemicals in hazardous conditions, and Rekha, the
widow of the worker Rakesh who was killed by one of those chemicals much before
the leak.
When the film is telling
the story of the slum dwellers around that Bhopal factory, it is moving and
realistic. The poignancy is exacerbated by the fact that, knowing what we know
about the night of December 2, 1984, we assume they will be dead by the end of
the film.
We grow attached to Dilip.
And that hurts.
This much is achieved even
though Bhopal makes some questionable
casting choices: Fagun Thakrar as Rekha does
not look like a Bhopali slumdweller, and try though he might, the talented Kal
Penn is unable to mask that American accent (he was perhaps chosen to add to
the film’s international cast with Martin Sheen and a wooden Mischa Barton
playing a foreign journalist).
However, Rajpal Yadav as
Dilip is a perfect pick. As the story rolls along, Dilip realises that the factory
is unsafe. He can’t afford to leave though, because of his desperate
circumstances. Dilip epitomises the tragedy of Bhopal – of abject poverty, of how
corrupt netas and a heartless business
empire exploited that poverty.
In the portrayal of
Dilip, his milieu, Motwani’s crusade and Indian politicians, the film can’t be
faulted. The portrayal of the UCC players from overseas is extremely
troublesome though.
There are three of them in
the film: Carbide CEO Warren Anderson (Martin Sheen), Edward “the accounts guy”,
and Shane Miller (David Brooks) who is the company’s fixer in Bhopal.
They are the big bosses
whose larger machinations controlled the goings-on at this UCC plant in India,
leading to the leak of the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas. Yet, the film
makes every effort to make them likeable to viewers, while giving the culpable
Indians – the factory supervisor Choudhary (Vineet Kumar) and the bribe-taking
Madhya Pradesh politician (Satish Kaushik) – a sleazy air about them.
The film’s American Nice
Guy No. 1 is Shane. He may be shown delivering a bribe, yet he is the voice of
everyone’s conscience, constantly slamming Edward’s ruthlessness.
Nice Guy No. 2 is
Anderson. The Carbide CEO is shown repeatedly justifying negligence at UCC
Bhopal; he knows that cost cutting at the factory has translated into unskilled
labour being used to run machines requiring expertise; one assumes he knows
that the plant’s air-conditioning has been turned off despite the in-house
safety officer’s protests; yet Bhopal
works hard to get us to like him. The dominant image of Anderson from the film is
as a sweet – even if patronising – white man who stops to speak to the little son of an Indian
household employee; a jolly old, hard-working, all-American blue collar worker who
rose to riches from humble beginnings.
These men did not have
to be portrayed as cliched villains with fangs and horns. Of course they could
have had with shades of grey. But what purpose was served by having Sheen play the
Carbide chief with a charming, avuncular air of benevolence?
After watching Bhopal twice, I went to the official website
in search of an answer and found it in a speech delivered by David Brooks, who is
also the film’s co-writer with director Ravi Kumar.
“…The intention,” he
says, “was to create…a human puzzle, that exposes the big issues of multinational
corporate governance – how business and government negotiate disaster. The film
explores the small details of the individual human decisions that made up those
complex problems. The ‘evil corporation’ is too easy. We wanted to ask the
audience “What you would do if you were Anderson? Or Dilip for that matter?”…”
Dear Mr Brooks, “The ‘evil corporation’
is too easy” only if you blame them and them alone. And are you actually
trying to quietly apportion even a tiny measure of blame to the miserably poor Dilip?
Brooks further says: “This
is about a nation and how it governed its people…”
Ah, we get it now. Just
as Anderson squarely blames UCIL (Union Carbide India Limited) in the film,
Brooks appears to favour blaming the Indian government. Of course the role of
corrupt Indian politicians in the entire saga is inexcusable and unforgivable. But
their amorality can’t be UCC’s excuse. What point is being made by this film
when it goes gentle on them?
Brooks continues: “If
Anderson and his ‘Carbiders’ could be shown as three-dimensional, even
likeable, then their two-dimensional corporate response to the disaster could
really shock.”
Err... mission
unaccomplished.
Bhopal: A Prayer For Rain pulls at the heartstrings with its
portrayal of the victims of the gas tragedy. It manages to explain what’s going
on at the factory without drowning us in jargon. It effectively builds up a
sense of foreboding about the impending disaster as chink after chink is
revealed in the running of Carbide’s Bhopal plant.
That being said, the
film’s simultaneous effort to whitewash the wrongdoings of Carbide’s American bosses
is repugnant to say the least.
Rating (out of five): **
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U
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Running time:
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103 minutes
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