ISRO's evolution of the last fifty years since inception couldn't have been better celebrated than the successful Mission Mangalyaan circa 2014. The film "Mission Mangal" captures that exciting milestone in 133 minutes of unbridled entertainment laced with energetic screenplay, peppy starcast and loads of cinematic Pax Indiana that will get animal spirits of "Made in India" back roaring. And who better to drive the narrative than Akshay Kumar, our hero for films with patriotic fervor releasing on national holidays - a metrosexual version of Manoj Kumar!
Director R.Balki, the creative brain behind the film helps director Jagan Shakti pace a well-written script which has a good prologue, middle story and an epic finish which though predictable gives some tense moments before the Mission becomes a success lauded by the world including NASA. But if you were to chronicle the saga of how a resource-starved ISRO built this mission like a bootstrapping startup entrepreneur, you need more cinematic ammunition than just being a minutuaeing National Geographic docu-maker. That is provided by a killer cast of two men and four women (played by the likes of Tapsee Pannu, Nithya Menen, Sonakshi Sinha, Sharmaan Joshi) and the worlds they inhabit (at home and in their minds) - they create a panorama of world views which first limit the mission and later unbottle their true potential for Mission Mars. But Akshay Kumar as Mission Director needs a shepherd to rein in these micro-Indians who run amok with their own agendas - one wants to migrate to NASA, one believes in astrology and was told to avoid Mangal planet if he has to get married, one just wants to pass time to vest superannuation benefits, one just underwent infertility treatment to become a mom, one wants to re-unite with her Army husband and so on. That shepherding is done brilliantly by Vidya Balan, let's call her the master of the project who steers the team to meet the deadlines and the deliverables. With her mercurial and multi-nuanced acting, Vidya Balan steals the show one more time acing up each scene with her own inimitable style - sparkling eyes, face as a pointer and modulation worth its weight in gold. She fights the many battles shown in the film that Indians, argumentative Indians fight every day in life with their biases, fears, doubts, naysaying beliefs, debilitating concepts at home and office - whether it's her son turning to Islam out of blind love of aping AR Rahman or a retiree who sees Mission Mangal as just as a job not as a mission.
Director Jagan Shakti and writer R.Balki must be complimented for creating a multi-layered script that shows India as an improbable bundle of flaws and contradictions to be overcome before anything great can ever be achieved - it is a cinematic feat that makes Space Mission theme seem more colorful and exciting to watch than a tik tok documentary reel. In between there are excursions into astrology (thought not well-explored because Astrologers in India predicted everything from World Wars to World Cup defeat in Semi Finals to Kumaragowda government collapse in Karnataka and are a happy punching bag in the quest for "scientific temper"), parenting (let the new gen be themselves!), call of duty (why any job than serving in army is no less!), bootstrapping (how long ISRO pulls off financial miracles without going public or crowd-funding!)and so on. The film is nothing short of achieving a miracle in convincing pundits and masses about the odds that ISRO goes through before you see a tense countdown of -15 on live TV. Akshay Kumar has given another fine performance of being a Director who takes all the brickbats on failures and then pats the team when met with success - those one-liner songs of Dev Anand hummed at critical points in the film tell a lot through hidden subtexts, do not miss them! Music by Amit Trivedi gives the exhilarating fuel needed to punctuate the right emotions throughout - one hardly feels a lag moment ever and the subtitles for Hindi is a welcome initiative to ensure nothing lost in translation. Cinematography by Ravi Varma and the VFX are also quite pleasing. A few more outer world shots would have made the film more immersive in experience.
Without explaining the complexity of fuel tanks and orbiters and what goes on in rocket science, the directorial team uses simpler narratives of how the final execution of Mission Mars looks like in the initial scenes to make the audience tether to a surcharge of emotions later and then make them go through the drama and believe some outlandish logic too (like using wolverine clothing for the outer covering and using non-recyclable plastic as light-weight fuel and so on!).
On the whole, the film is immensely watchable and achieves multiple goals of appreciating what ISRO does without sounding theoretical or boring. Hollywood has paid more tributes to NASA and made space shuttle travel a routine affair! Instead of making looney comic stories about life on moon (like some Telugu films did), this is a good attempt to bridge the gap between Astronomy and Public. A film like this will do more education than a hundred trips to Birla Planetorium.
Rating: 3.75/5
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