This movie is one of the best movie thakry I love this movieThe occasional self-doubt that Nawazuddin Siddiqui displayed in the biopic of Saadat Hasan Manto is completely absent in his second biopic in four months. In Thackeray, a film based on the life and theories of Shiv Sena founder Bal Keshav Thackeray, popularly known as Balasaheb, Nawazuddin has attempted playing a controversial political figure with a big heart and total zeal.
Given the kind of biopics Bollywood produces, it wasn't audacious to expect a botched up, idol worshipping, contorted storyline with sole aim of energising the party cadres ahead of the all-important general elections of 2019, but Thackeray surprises from the word go. It takes the popular hardliner image of Bal Thackeray and amplifies its effect by not holding back anything. There is absolutely no qualm in propagating ideas that can be divisive and can instigate violence. The makers are not hesitant in presenting Thackeray as somebody who used violence, or at least was in favour of using it, as a means to instill peace. Ironically, such a tactic takes Thackeray closer to authenticity. There isn’t any desire to please political opponents.
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The transformation of a young person struggling to make ends meet into a ruthless, not so democratic leader has been segregated into chapters. We meet his father, played by Mukund Gosawi, whose reputation helps an ambitious cartoonist set up his own magazine. In a fantastic animated opening sequence, we see the germ of the idea of a Marathi one-upmanship forming in the head of a young cartoonist.
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The film wants us to believe that the rise of the angry Marathi consciousness against the dominant South Indians in Mumbai, then Bombay, in the ‘60s, was the result of an apparent humiliation and disdain thrown at the poor natives. With a tiger’s roar in the background, it soon changes into a physical fight between the locals and the so called ‘outsiders.’ This emotion is so overriding in its approach that there is no scope to tone it down later in the film. Thackeray’s use of violence has been justified in as many words. He gets rivals beaten to pulp and mouths dialogues like ‘Laal Bandar ki jaat ko yahaan se mitaana padega( This breed of red monkeys has to be chased away) , ’ in an apparent jibe on left labour unions and their modus operandi.
Nawazuddin’s Bal Keshav, in a way, is also the ‘sutradhar’ of his own story. There are long narrations and no ambiguity in views on Hitler, emergency or the Muslims. Thackeray‘Marathi Maanus, ’ and how it could mean the end of the world to millions residing in and around Mumbai.