If you want the “truth” about Captain Gopinath or Che Guevara, go read books about them, or go watch documentaries.
Soorarai Pottru — the “loosely inspired by” biopic of Air Deccan founder Captain GR Gopinath — is the season’s hottest, most talked-about film, so let’s talk about a biopic about another socialist hero from another part of the world. (For those who haven’t seen Sudha Kongara’s movie, one of its key changes is the transformation of a capitalist entrepreneur into a socialist do-gooder.) Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries opens with a sort-of disclaimer: “This isn’t a tale of heroic feats. It’s about two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.” The note is signed: “Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, 1952.” You may know the man as Che.
But first, let’s discuss the inherent problem with biopics. Half that word (“bio”) suggests something “biographical”, i.e., “true to life”. That’s a very heavy burden to place on a movie, where dramatic beats are infinitely more important than “truth”. I would rather have a fictionalised film that works than a “true” film that doesn’t. If you want the “truth” about Captain Gopinath or Che Guevara, go read books about them, or go watch documentaries. No film, even one that calls itself a “bio”pic, is going to give you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
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Baradwaj Rangan 
madhusudhan194
November 21, 2020
Is Soorarai Pottru’s shift in milieu actually that controversial? I haven’t heard or read anyone from outside this blog raising that complaint. Not to say that it’s invalid. But largely people seem to have no problem with it.
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Madhu Jagan
November 21, 2020
“All that matters is whether the spirit of the man is captured, and that’s what you should base your evaluations on”
I don’t think SP captured the essence or spirit of Captain Gopinath’s life, in fact it viewed his life through an extremely distorted prism. I feel the makers would have been better off without advertising that the movie is based on a book or a real life character (a la Guru). When you change the milieu, motivation, background of a central character and still claim it is his life story, that to me reeks of dishonesty.
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Eswar
November 21, 2020
Nice one, BR.
But first, let’s discuss the inherent problem with biopics. Half that word (“bio”) suggests something “biographical”, i.e., “true to life”. That’s a very heavy burden to place on a movie, where dramatic beats are infinitely more important than “truth”.
This is probably true even in biographies. It is likely that the books are edited in such a way, sometimes with half-truths, to make it readable and engaging, and thereby marketable.
The Motorcycle Diaries is an interesting analogy for other reasons. When I watched the movie, I enjoyed it very much and was quite moved by it. But many years later when I learnt more about Che, I had a sense of disappointment as if I was tricked by the movie by not showing who the actual Che is. I am still not comfortable recommending the movie. But that’s not the director’s fault. For a director, a book or a life is just another script. If there is anyone who could dispute the director’s take on it is the author or the individual whom the movie is about.
This also reminds me of Poomani talking about Asuran and Vekkai.
“Even though I am the author, I cannot expect that every aspect of the novel should be reflected in the film. It is impossible in an adaptation. I don’t now what he [director Vetrimaaran] had in mind while making the film. But there are some basic things that cannot be altered,”
…
Asked about the reviews and interpretations that said the film had dealt with the idea of suppression of Dalits, and that Chidambaram, played by Ken Karunas, and his father Sivasami, played by Dhanush in the film, had broken the shackles, Mr. Poomani said the novel did not deal with the idea of Dalitism.
“It is sheer casteism and we should not give room to it. The reviewers and interpreters would probably have kept in mind the problems faced by Dalits in the Thanjavur district while reviewing the novel and the film. We do not have Panchami lands in our area and did not witness denial of wearing chappals,” he said.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/novelist-rejects-interpretation-of-asuran-as-the-victory-of-dalits-over-oppressors/article29612672.ece
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Ravi K
November 22, 2020
“Soorarai Potru” is more akin to films like “Citizen Kane” or “Last Days” that use real people as strong inspirations for fictional characters. We all know who inspired these films, but because the main characters aren’t technically William Randolph Hearst or Kurt Cobain or GR Gopinath, the films shouldn’t be judged for deviating from the inspirations’ real lives.
If the Suriya character in SP was called Gopinath I could see how the changes to the character would be a bigger deal, though even then we would have to allow Kongara SOME room for artistic license.
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ravenus1
November 22, 2020
Not a comment on SP, which I haven’t as yet seen, but while biopics need not be verbatim accounts of their protagonists’ lives, they are also obliged to be not just a bare outline passed through a generic template of heroic / patriotic story, and do not respect individualistic uniqueness.
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Madan
November 22, 2020
@Madhu Jagan : Exactly. To declare the film to have been based on Air Deccan and then obliterate most of the real story sounds like wanting to have the cake and eat it too. I think we in the audience have the right to call out such cynical moves, it’s not always about us not having the right expectations from a biopic.
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vijay
November 23, 2020
I am surprised a film like Iruvar which everybody knew was clearly based on the duo did not get much grief for depicting the fictional double-role Ash character as MGR’s ladyllove and a sudden accident to get rid of the actor. Those scenes did not add anything much to the film as well
with SP, a simple correction in tagline to that of “inspired from Gopinath’s life” rather than “based on Gopinath’s life/book” would have fixed the issue
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Alex John
November 23, 2020
I can perfectly understand changes being made to a real life story for cinematic purposes, but I believe what the filmmakers of SP apparently ( I haven’t read the book) did to GR Gopinath’s story was unfair.
What ‘Motorcycle diaries’ retained was not only the man’s ambition, but also what he inherently was, his ideas and his political inclination. SP on the other hand, almost took the man out his story and placed him somewhere else, a place he would never relate himself to if he, somehow, actually were made to live in.
The vast revision of the real story might have helped the mainstream cinematic prospects, but to me, it was injustice done to a thoroughly meaningful , yet traditionally apolitical life (yes, he has been in politics, but you know what I mean).
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San
November 23, 2020
@Eswar
“But many years later when I learnt more about Che, I had a sense of disappointment as if I was tricked by the movie by not showing who the actual Che is.”
Do tell. 🙂 My real view of Che is from the move The Motorcycle Diaries
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Srinivas R
November 24, 2020
Alex – I think Capt. Gopinath was a bit of a socialist himself, at least as per Sudha in one of her interviews.
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H. Prasanna
November 26, 2020
One thing that was interesting for was that Maara was a farmer, too. If it was a biopic of Gopinath, it could have been used to show his entrepreneurial spirit, given that he really dabbled in agriculture. But, with Suriya’s recent obsession about being a farmer in every other movie (NGK, Kaapaan), it turned out to be a whimsical coincidence.
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Madan
November 26, 2020
H Prasanna: For that, Suriya must want to become a character and not just star as Suriya himself. That laziness informs the entire movie. They pretend to go a long way, but don’t in the end. It’s half baked for a reason. The part that’s baked is there to convince people to give it more credit than it deserves for ‘good intentions’ but the other part makes it deeply unsatisfying vis a vis the enormous potential the story offered.
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Eswar
November 27, 2020
@San: 😀 I don’t remember the finer details. The gist is Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
An example:
https://cafehayek.com/2012/04/the-real-che.html
Kaushik Basu puts it succinctly in ‘Beyond the Invisible Hand’:
We know from previous attempt to build better societies…many of those who have tried just by their heart have blundered. I cannot deny a certain admiration for those who have yearned for such a society, and those who have actually tried to achieve it – Karl Marx, Mao Tse-Tung, Martin Luther King Jr., Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Allende and Gandhi. The fact that most of these experiments failed, and some of the initially idealistic leaders took perverse paths and created draconian systems, is not because their target was wrong but rather they took an impossible path. … Of the revolutionaries just named, several are hated figures and only a few are generally admired. It is interesting, though, that the ones who are generally admired are those who never actually got to govern.
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Alex John
November 28, 2020
@Srinivas R,
Maybe, but he, as far as I know, was never an outspoken one.
See, all those ‘based on a true story’ b@#%^ is one thing, but adapting a man’s life into the big screen is an entirely different matter altogether. By doing that, you are telling the story of a life that is/was registered on earth. As far as I am concerned, staying as close as possible to that life is the best thing you can do for a biopic. You’ll be excused if the vast changes paves the way for a groundbreaking movie, which is definitely not the case here.
Lets take ‘Che’ himself to obtain a different perspective. What if somebody takes his story, retains the empathy, and portray him as a right wing bourgeois with his heart at the right place? How kindly will that be taken? Will not having an aggressively loyal bunch of fans be counted as frailty?
In a nutshell, I don’t believe you can treat a life that lived on earth the way you treat some kind of ‘true story’. Because no matter what movie titles say, you don’t live twice.
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Madan
November 29, 2020
“What if somebody takes his story, retains the empathy, and portray him as a right wing bourgeois?” Exactly. To likewise flip the Gopinath example, would anybody be ok if Ilayaraja’s life was made into a biopic only with him shown as a Vadakalai Iyengar? Yeah, didn’t think so. Sorry, it is not ‘progressive’ in any way to change the caste of a real life upper caste person. I am prepared to not attach any negative epithets to it and just leave it be stating the bald fact. But it’s not something positive either by the same token.
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Eswar
November 29, 2020
Alex John: Lets take ‘Che’ himself to obtain a different perspective. What if somebody takes his story, retains the empathy, and portray him as a right wing bourgeois with his heart at the right place? How kindly will that be taken? Will not having an aggressively loyal bunch of fans be counted as frailty?
It is a problem only if it is claimed as the ‘definitive’ story. If someone sees Che in a different light and narrates from their perspective then that is not distorting the person’s life. It is only their take on their view of that individual. A related example: The John Maynard Keynes I know is a Left of Centre economist. At Cafe Hayek, where I was introduced to Keynes, showed him as the opposite of Hayek. So in my works, Keynes will be reflected similarly. I know another reader of this blog who views Keynes differently. And in his writings, Keynes’ economic positioning is different from mine. Does this mean we are trying to distort history? It is merely the way we see Keynes from our world view.
Madan: To likewise flip the Gopinath example, would anybody be ok if Ilayaraja’s life was made into a biopic only with him shown as a Vadakalai Iyengar?
Anyone who does not have a caste identity should be okay with that. If Ilaiyaraja’s contribution to the world is his music, then does his caste matter to an audience who do not care about caste?. Of course, a historian can be peeved about this representation. But then anyone who cares about history should ensure every aspect of the work is reflective of the individual and its surroundings. Not selectively picking what bothers them. From that view, one cannot make a biopic of Ilaiyaraja in Hindi without him being shown speaking in Tamil throughout the movie. Unless Ilaiyaraja ‘truly’ spent most of his life speaking Hindi.
—
I haven’t watched ‘Sorrarai Pottru’. Is Gopinath’s character shown as a Tamilian or Kannadiga in the movie?
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Madan
November 29, 2020
Easwar : What you say may work in theory but we know the outcry that would break out if roles were reversed. I don’t have any problem with any amount of changes in a film for artistic licence but when it is merely a front in a cultural war, I am going to call it out.
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Eswar
November 29, 2020
we know the outcry that would break out if roles were reversed.
Madan, absolutely. There will be a huge outcry. But for me, the way forward is not by strengthening one’s identities even further but by being more generous about it.
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Madan
November 29, 2020
“But for me, the way forward is not by strengthening one’s identities even further but by being more generous about it.” – No disagreement there. That is what I would like to see as well. I am only saying that it can be either you change both Gopinath and Raja’s caste or you don’t change in both situations. It cannot be that the former is ok but latter is not. Because if you actually accept that, then what you are saying in essence is the achievements of an upper caste person cannot be celebrated in cine form without first erasing his caste identity. Which of course is BS. By extending this logic, any biopic based on Ramanujam also ought to convert his caste identity into a lower caste one and the question then becomes, where does it end, this appeasement. Why indeed should we accept appeasement as a given; not like turning Gopinath into Maara magically makes the plight of impoverished lower caste families better. And it’s about time that message is spelt out loud and clear.
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Eswar
November 29, 2020
I am only saying that it can be either you change both Gopinath and Raja’s caste or you don’t change in both situations.
Agree.
My wider point about being generous with identity is: looking at someone on the screen and not identifying his caste with one’s own. Why is one bothered by a particular caste being shown in poor light? Or feel proud when shown in a good light. Is it because they identify themselves with that caste? If so, than what we are responding to isn’t our own caste identity? When we respond to our caste identity then we may not be sensitive to other caste identities. One way to avoid this is by dissolving our identity. When our ‘shared’ identity is terminated we neither feel elated nor offended by what is shown on the screen. But as long as we keep perceiving that shared identity, the appeasement will continue is some form.
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Alex John
November 29, 2020
@Eswar
I believe it is a definitive story if it is somebody’s life. There is nothing tentative about it.
“If someone sees Che in a different light and narrates from their perspective then that is not distorting the person’s life”
You’re right, and I agreed with you even before you wrote it. Going too far with changing a real life story is okay if the film has great artistic weight to it(e.g. Inglorious Basterds) but in a straight up mass film like SP, it almost feels like a crime being committed against the individual. Take a man’s life, throw out his caste, his social status, his character and political positioning, and you have practically stripped him of his very identity. If you do that, then you’d better have a gleefully outlandish film to present the viewers with, or you’re being unjust to a life lived on the earth.
I believe nobody has the right to do that. Imagine somebody doing this to Che’s life and trying to get away with it. Wouldn’t that be a sight?
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Karthik
November 30, 2020
To likewise flip the Gopinath example, would anybody be ok if Ilayaraja’s life was made into a biopic only with him shown as a Vadakalai Iyengar?
I am not sure I find this analogy completely fair. It could be because I didn’t view Soorarai Pottru as a biopic. Events in “Simply Fly” seem to have been used merely as source material to craft a mass movie around the idea of bringing aviation to the…masses. The fact that a number of the events in the movie really happened in some shape or form adds greater plausibility to the fictional story being narrated which in my view enhances the impact, without it necessarily being a representation of the true story of Air Deccan. The movie (and the PR around it) did emphasize the “loosely inspired” aspect, and Suriya made it a point to state that they wanted to create a fictional character not based on Gopinath. In that sense, the socioeconomic class of the character they created services the underdog narrative and I don’t find that problematic.
Along that thought, if Raja were to write an autobiography, and someone were to sample key elements from that book and make a story of a monumentally successful musician with added flavor or conflicts arising from an upper class background, I wouldn’t find that problematic either— as long as the makers create a distance with the real person, as I believe the makers did with Gopinath.
Of course, if we allow for a healthy dose of social consciousness to color the film appreciation, then we could view the subversion of the socio economic elements in Raja’s story as negating the challenges faced by the underprivileged especially in a story as monumental as his. Viewing Gopinath’s case with that dose of social consciousness, it doesn’t seem like his socioeconomic status disadvantaged him in any significant way, and so negating that aspect, to me, doesn’t do much disservice to his story.
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brangan
November 30, 2020
Karthik: Yeah, I agree. The main thing is that they changed the name of the character. It’s not “Gopinath”.
But even if they hadn’t, it’s a creator’s right to “imagine-ise” someone’s life. I recall there was a play in Broadway (can’t recall the name now) that reimagined the Ramanujan-Hardy relationship in homosexual terms. It caused a bit of buzz then — through not troll-level buzz because I think it was pre-Twitter.
Now, Hardy/Ramanujan may or may not have been gay (Ramanujan was married, though), but as long as the relevant disclaimers have been applied — in SP’s case, “loosely inspired by” — my only issue is whether the film/play works or not as a standalone piece of art.
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Madan
November 30, 2020
Karthik: They basically wanted to have the cake and eat it too. They said it’s based on Simply Fly clearly in the opening credits and immediately issued the fictionalization disclaimer. Ergo, they want to use the Air Deccan story to create additional buzz while also making the protagonist as different as possible from Gopinath. So excuse me for not feeling generous in this instance when I can see through the cynical motives of the makers.
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Eswar
November 30, 2020
I believe it is a definitive story if it is somebody’s life. There is nothing tentative about it.
Alex John: This is probably where our different views come from. I don’t see it that way. The multiple faces humans wear during a lifetime makes most work less definitive.
Take a man’s life, throw out his caste, his social status, his character and political positioning, and you have practically stripped him of his very identity.
Yes. Only if the person identifies his self by these identities. And who is the best person to tell us what Gopinath’s identities are? The audience, the makers or Gopinath himself? If Gopinath has any problems with the way his life has been portrayed in the movie, then that is valid. If he insists his identity have been violated in the name of artistic licence then I will support him. In my order of importance, an individual’s right precedes over any artistic licence. But when the audience claim that Gopinath’s identity has been violated, what they really mean is that the labels they had attached to Gopinath have been violated.
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madhusudhan194
November 30, 2020
“But when the audience claim that Gopinath’s identity has been violated, what they really mean is that the labels they had attached to Gopinath have been violated.” – Agree with this. When Capt. Gopinath himself comes out and says the character captures his essence and doesn’t have a problem with the film’s deviations from his life, it probably means he doesn’t identify himself with his caste / socioeconomic status. If we do, that’s our problem. Not the film’s. When there’s a lot of honestly in the writing, these deviations don’t seem problematic.
“the other part makes it deeply unsatisfying vis a vis the enormous potential the story offered.” Regarding the subject matter of the film having more potential, yes it does. We can’t forget the fact that this was meant to be a mass film made for the masses. This is not Scam 1992. Even Scorsese had to simplify The Wolf of Wall Street to a great extent from the original story. I think that’s unavoidable when you want box office success.
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brangan
December 1, 2020
“Helena Bonham Carter has said The Crown has a “moral responsibility” to tell viewers that it is a drama, rather than historical fact…”
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/dec/01/helena-bonham-carter-says-the-crown-should-admit-to-viewers-its-a-drama/
Maybe they should have also said “loosely inspired by”? 😛
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brangan
December 1, 2020
And the other POV:
The Crown’s fake history is as corrosive as fake news
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/16/the-crown-fake-history-news-tv-series-royal-family-artistic-licence
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Madan
December 1, 2020
Ah no. I browsed through Simon Jenkins complaints and realizing that they sounded like the excuses of the character Pink in The Trial (last song of The Wall), cut short the read. This is just the Royal Family wheeling out the PR machinery, slavishly faithful as always to the most sexist institution in the developed world while at other times Messrs Jenkins and others knock us on our heads for unwoke misdemeanors that are often more imagined than real.
Let it be clear now if it hasn’t been before. The Royal Family hates independent and outspoken women while it will put up with its deviant, to put it mildly, men. This is the light in which Prince William’s accusations against BBC regarding Martin Basheer’s ‘hurtful’ interview of Diana should be seen. Well, if she hadn’t fessed up and told him what they all knew in the RF and concealed from the world (that “there are three of us in the marriage”), she would have never been cut loose from a suffocating marriage. But William has his mind on only one thing and that is that he is next in line after Charles so he will be a good boy and do what Mama Beth (or Liz if you will) tells him to. The same Queen who rushed to protect Andrew while telling Harry and Markle to F.O. Andrew was a good friend of Epstein. He should be tried, there are accusers against him ready to stand in the witness box. But apparently it’s OK for Royal men to sexually abuse children while the women dare not ever speak up.
Too late, Simon. The Crown has reminded a new generation all over of how badly Charles treated Diana and how the Royal Fam would always stop short of reading out the Riot Act to him. Maybe clean up your house before you hurl the accusatory finger at Netflix?
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MANK
December 1, 2020
I was under the impression that The Crown has the silent support of the Royal family, otherwise how can they tackle real life characters (people who are still alive) without their permission.
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Madan
December 1, 2020
MANK: Royal Fam will throw those under the bus that no longer serve their purpose. Like Michael Shea, the press secretary who went on to become a thriller writer and who is shown in the series triggering the leak about the Queen’s unhappiness with Thatcher. Once events didn’t play out as planned, they made Shea take the fall. And now Simon-foaming-at-the-mouth-Jenkins is telling us about what a dastardly lie it was to show the Queen as being involved in that leak. How gullible do you really think people are, Simon? This was worse than the disingenuous defences offered in favour of nepotism during the height of the SSR scandal.
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Aman Basha
December 1, 2020
Fact of the matter, the Royal Family would be highly irrelevant to public discourse by now, if not for Diana. She epitomized the fairytale version of the kind and beautiful princess that people loved and at the same time, emphasizes how far from that fantasy the royals actually are. The ghost of Diana still haunts Buckingham Palace in every way.
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Enigma
December 1, 2020
I just finished the fourth season of ‘The Crown’ on Netflix. It does not show the royal family in good light, highly unlikely that they would have supported this show. Prince Charles especially is depicted as a whiny, grumpy, unfaithful, cold man. There is some sympathy for the queen but ultimately the entire royal family come across as priviliged, entitled, cold brats. I was disappointed by the way Thatcher was portrayed. Thatcher was a strong, authoritative leader and that does not come through in Anderson’s portrayal. Overall, the fourth season was not as good as the previous ones.
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Aman Basha
December 1, 2020
“while telling Harry and Markle to F.O”
Never followed this, but was it really like how SRK and Kajol got banished out of the Raichand English mahal in K3G like the memes?
One thing I liked from this overblown fracas (which again was drawn back to Diana in some way) is it proves how perfectly ‘logical’ my guilty pleasure is 🙂 🙂
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Madan
December 2, 2020
Aman Basha: I don’t remember enough of K3G to relate now. What I can tell you is AOL of all websites started trending on FB like hell. I mean it popped up in my feed and a couple of years and I haven’t used AOL since Page and Brin’s invention won the internet! And they were ALL vicious articles insinuating tensions in the Royal Fam and these tensions being due to Markle’s unwillingness to follow the rules. It was a non stop drib-drib-drib. I was therefore not surprised by the eventual outcome, only surprised, pleasantly, that Harry stood by Markle and gave the metaphorical middle finger to the RF. Well deserved. Again, the alleged transgressions of Markle were so minor compared to, um, continuously pursuing an affair with Camila after getting married and then blaming Diana for the failure of the marriage.
And as with SSR, such errands carried out by conventional media make me want to say: look, if you want to carry out slanderous campaigns on behalf of powerful interests, then don’t be surprised if people regard you skeptically and cut your gatekeeping power when it comes to disseminating information. It’s bound to happen because people are not as stupid as you seem to think. We can see right through this nonsense. The issue is simply that Markle is too Republican (un-monarchic) for the tastes of the Royal Fam and that’s a high crime in the Royal Fam world.
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Aman Basha
March 8, 2021
Anyone seeing this Oprah interview? My God, the Crown has nothing on this drama. So many bombshells that now, I don’t even know what to believe in this mess.
I’ll just wait for Season 7 🙂
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Madan
March 8, 2021
Missed it. Thanks for the heads up.
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Jayram
September 9, 2022
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61585886
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Jayram
September 9, 2022
Aman, do you think the Crown will end in Season 7 with all that has happened so far?
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