Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior
Year: 2020
Director: Om Raut
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Kajol, Saif Ali Khan, Luke Kenny, Ajinkya Deo, Devdutt Nage

The reviews are gushing. The audiences are loving it. The cash registers are ringing. There are Whatsapp forwards extolling the film’s virtue and exhorting people to go watch a great movie about a great warrior!

So what are my impressions after watching Tanhaji-The unsung warrior?

History

From childhood, I have been an ardent admirer of King Shivaji (Shivaji Maharaj!) and have devoured books on his times and tales. The story of Tanaji Malusare is one of the major nuggets from those historic legends. Tanaji was Maharaj’s childhood friend and trusted lieutenant, who took up the challenge to conquer Kondana, a geopolitically important fort, which was surrendered to the Mughals as a part of a losing treaty. The strategic mountain-fort was considered invincible thanks to its hard to reach location and a strong Mughal garrison led by a brave Rajput general Udaybhan Rathod.

Tanaji kept his son’s marriage on hold for this mission, uttering famous lines ‘Aadhi lagna KonDaNyache aaNi nantar Raibache’ (‘First comes the Kondana mission and only then my son Raiba’s marriage!). He led a surprise attack on the fort in the middle of the night. The popular, (but challenged by the historians!), legend goes that his small army scaled an almost inaccessible Dronagiri cliff by tying the rope to a ghorpad (a monitor lizard)! The battle was fierce and Tanaji, who fended with his left hand after his shield was broken, lost his life, but not before seriously wounding his adversary Udaybhan. Seeing their general die, the Maratha soldiers (‘MaavaLe’) lost nerve and were about to climb down, when Suryaji Malusare (Tanaji’s brother) and Shelar Mama (Tanaji’s maternal uncle) cut the ropes and gave them a ‘Now or never’ kind of ultimatum. The battle resumed; the fort was conquered. Distraught Shivaji Maharaj’s immortal lines ‘Gad aala paN sinh gela’ (The fort is won but the lion is lost!) perfectly summed up everyone’s emotions. The fort was then renamed ‘Sinhgad’, where now Tanaji’s memorial stands.

How’s the film?

Well, I am happy for ‘Team Tanhaji’. Lead actor-cum-producer Ajay Devgn, and the debutant director Om Raut, deserve kudos for bringing this rousing story to life. It is a good movie that they have made, with lavish period feel setting, extraordinary action scenes, capable performances, clap-worthy dialogues, crowd-pleasing song-and-dance sequences and dollops of drama.

They have re-told and re-packaged history in a glossy glamorous way and the contemporary audiences have lapped it up. A heroic Tanaji (sorry, Tanhaji!) taking on a barbaric Udaybhan. The backdrop of Maratha history’s glorious chapter. The license to kill and thrill with ‘Inspired by’, ‘Added for dramatic effect’ kind of disclaimers.

The ‘filmy’ route is obvious. Tanaji is without the famous handlebar moustache; he wears leather jacket and knee-high leather boots. His opening rope-assisted flying battle-scene looks less of Maratha warfare and more of the ‘Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger’-styled action. He has the gall to impersonate a hermit to question Shivaji Maharaj and Jijabai in the darbar, and he is foolish enough to go himself to carry out the fort’s reconnaissance and get captured by Udaybhan in the process! In turn, Udaybhan acts like a deranged dementor-like figure, who has a never-heard-until now-kind of a back-end love-story and who gets on Kondana a never-mentioned-until now-kind of a massive gun called ‘Nagin’, and that, too by travelling in the river rafts! The roles of Suryaji Malusare and Shelar Mama get short shrift.

If at all, so many ‘cinematic’ liberties were going to be taken, then why they did not use the much more well-known legend of the ‘Ghorpad’-assisted ascent?

With its sleek look and feel, good performances and superb action scenes Tanhaji-The unsung warrior makes for impressive box-office cinema, particularly for the audiences unaware of the legendary character; but the blatantly distorted re-telling and re-packaging of the famed legend will leave history enthusiasts shaking their head in despair.

A better, closer to history adaptation would have made it an all time classic! And it wouldn't have lessened its drama one bit!

Rating

3 stars