Sudha Kongara’s remake of the Tamil original ‘Soorarai Pottru,’ inspired by Air Deccan founder G.R. Gopinath’s memoir, is a bit of a lazy remix; the narrative blips in the original too have been retained
Bumper sticker philosophy is believed to be the essence of the modern-day Indian biopic and Sudha Kongara’s Sarfira abides by that approach quite wholeheartedly. It’s a no-guts-no-glory story that places the common man at the centre and uses sentimentality, cranked up to max at all times, to fly its message home. Those who have watched the Tamil original Soorarai Pottru (2020), which won the National Award in 2022, will not only find the remake as a bit of a lazy remix but also that the narrative blips in the original to have been retained with aplomb.
The Suriya and Aparna Balamurali-led film was flagged down by critics for its overripedness but was still praised for imbuing the cliched story with nuance, especially through the crackling chemistry between the two leads. Sudha Kongara proved with the first iteration that it is possible to elevate the mass hero without resorting to silly antics and her proactive decision to bring the woman in the man's life to the fore (as much as possible) resulted in the best moments of Soorarai Pottru.
Similarly, Sarfira sustains our attention only because of what Radhika Madan and Akshay Kumar manage to create as an onscreen married couple. The rest, though, feels a lot like a neat jotdown from the biopic manual which is now to be held responsible for all the countless feeble attempts made at charting real-life inspiration. This one is inspired by the many travails of G.R. Gopinath as described in his self-explanatory memoir, Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey (2011).
A Dream to Fly
The story, too, is a beat-by-beat replica of every ‘based on a true story’ film that you have watched so far — except that the effort has gone mainly into changing the backdrop, the names, the songs and maybe, a little of the central ambition. Kumar plays Vir Jagannath Mhatre, a commoner who hails from a small town in the Satara district of Maharashtra. Vir lives up to his name in that he is the social crusader who will station himself in the middle of a railway track just so that he can convince authorities to make the train stop at his hometown station of Jarandeshwar. His brawler methods irk his Gandhian father and there’s constant friction in his rustic household, which includes everyone (including his super typical filmy mother Seema Biswas) slipping in a line in Marathi and speaking the rest with a strong, unnecessary twang.
Vir Mhatre joins the Air Force and makes something out of himself, but his relationship with dad remains unresolved. A tragedy, as it always does, occurs at the worst of times and our man is now guilt-ridden and equally resolute to fulfill a self-imposed mission: to be the founder of India’s first airline that caters to the middle and the lower class — the RK Laxman category — who mustn’t restrict themselves to train ke dhakke anymore. This is during the turn of the millennium, mind you, so the prospects are mighty low because only the Goswamis, the Walias and other elite can run the aviation industry — hell, as we are told more than just once, even Ratan Tata couldn’t take off back then. Nevertheless, Vir’s ambition and poignance succeed in charming suitor Rani (Madan), who boasts the dream of being a bakery queen herself.
Broad strokes, no doubt, but Sarfira still soars high (enough) because of Kongara’s original screenplay, which she has rewritten for Hindi with Shalini Ushadevi. One of the highlights of both versions is how they hit the ground running and do not incorporate frills to ease the viewer into the belly of the drama. The very first scene serves as a lovely metaphor for what the film represents: Vir Mhatre’s Deccan Air is about to land its maiden test flight but his nemesis, the irredeemable Paresh Goswami (Paresh Rawal making a carbon-copy reprisal), wouldn’t allow them to do so. Knowing just how dangerous the situation is, Vir wades through Hyderabad traffic on his motorbike and somehow, just somehow, saves the day. The story is about a man who couldn’t once afford a plane ticket and is now dreaming of owning a large fleet of commercial planes — and what better way to exemplify this than by showing (and not telling) that he can control things pretty well with his feet planted on the ground.
A role right up Akshay’s alley
Sarfira, despite all the hackneyed moves, works for a good part because of this very quality of the screenplay. Kongara wants to make every scene whistle-worthy but not without making small developments in the story each time around; even though the overall picture is seen and realised from afar, some of the individual scenes carry a punch to elicit some excitement in us. One such is the first encounter between Rani and Vir who strike romance just as easily as they challenge one another to keep fighting for their respective dreams. Radhika Madan, an accomplished artist, might have felt that she is the second fiddle in the scheme of things here but the writing, once again, gives her a valuable character to play with.
The same, though, cannot be said about Rawal’s villain who, in every sense of the description, remains banal and unenterprising throughout. As much as his Paresh Goswami represents corporate greed and arrogance, Sarfira ends up being a drawled-out, emotionally tedious film only because its antagonist packs zero punch. His one-upmanship knows no bounds and there is scene after scene dispensed to communicate this trait of his; all that baggage ultimately does is stretch the runtime beyond a salvageable point. In the same vein, seemingly borrowed from S. Shankar’s handbook for a social ‘mass’ film, Kongara includes a long parade of unremarkable politicians, evil government officials and naive villagers who are meant to only test the hero in one way or another.
The rest of the cast includes Saurabh Goyal, Krishnakumar Balasubramanian, Anil Charanjeett, Prakash Belawadi and R. Sarathkumar, and others who, although are seen as placeholders in the hero’s journey, fare well in elevating the flimsy material. But, all said and done, Sarfira is a decent watch mainly because of Akshay Kumar’s commitment to the role. Sure, Vir Jagannath Mhatre is right up his current alley but the actor does a solid job of understanding the pulse of his performance and fills the archetypal role with a life of his own.
The emotional bits, such as the one involving him begging for a loan at an airport or the scene in which he learns of his father’s demise (no spoiler, trust me), test him a lot and while he buckles under that pressure, he shines bright when he is asked to do all the talking with his body language. One might think it took a filmmaker from a different film industry to jolt him into action, but this is a film, regardless, that shows up in a completely new light.
