Bollywood is going through a churn where in recent times, many movies with a historical and political background have not only been made and released but have been extremely well received by the audience. Progressively, movies a different political theme is tasting success at the box office. Recently, we saw movies like The Accidental Prime Minister do well and now, with The Tashkent Files is breaking glass ceilings for off-beat political dramas.
The Tashkent Files, directed by Vivek Agnihotri released on 12th April 2019 amidst a lot of outrage from members of the Congress party. Congress was of the opinion that the movie demonises the Gandhi family.
‘The Tashkent Files’ is about one of the tallest leaders of the country, Lal Bahadur Shastri and his mysterious disappearance. A mystery that has long haunted the nation and questions that have long been pointed, in silent, dark corners of the collective subconscious at the first family of Indian politics – The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
After hoards of outrage by Congress, the Lutyens ecosystem struck. For no good reason, there were several movie reviews that demonised the movie. Raja Sen, movie review flat out refused to write about the movie. Aseem Chhabra, another soldier of the Bollywood confederate responded to the movie’s PR agent and said he does not want to watch the movie at all. Flat out refused. The players of the ecosystem rained down hate on the movie without even watching it.
stalwarts in the industry like Rajeev Masand and Anupama Chopra have refused to review Vivek Agnihotri’s movie. They have, of course, not provided any reason for doing so, but for those who follow politics and the veiled players in the political arena, are well aware of the reasons that may have forced them to betray their profession.
The outrage and demonisation of the movie, though, seems to have failed. The Tashkent Files which had was made with a paltry Rs. 2.55 crores budget has done phenomenally well at the box office in its category.
At the end of Week 4, The Tashkent Files had totalled a business of Rs. 13.25 crores according to Taran Adarsh.
https://twitter.com/taran_adarsh/status/1125308627638558722?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The Tashkent Files, the small budget product of love was up against a big blockbuster like Avengers. One glance at the business it drew makes it clear the scale of unevenness when it comes to the box office battle.
https://twitter.com/taran_adarsh/status/1125300248203546625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
It is thus no mean feat that The Tashkent Files managed to hold its own in its own category.
When OpIndia spoke to Vivek Agnihotri, he said that the movie has survived massive ups and downs. When the Avengers Endgame was released, he said, everyone said that the movie, The Tashkent Files was done. However, the shows increased. Even abroad, Vivek says that the movie is doing well.
In Kanpur, the shows of The Tashkent Files had almost stopped running as all theatres picked up other movies. But when several people started demanding that the show is brought back, the movie was picked up again by the movie hall owners, said Vivek Agnihotri.
Earlier, when we had spoken to Vivek Agnihotri, he had spoken of the roadblocks and opposition he faced while trying to release this movie. He had said, “it would never have happened had I make a movie eulogising Nehru”, and perhaps he was right.
This time, in our conversation, Vivek Agnihotri said that several journalists spoke to his wife and artist Pallavi Joshi to ask her why OpIndia.com was taken on board as a media partner. In fact, Joshi was told that the movie will not get the necessary traction and nobody will touch the movie because they partnered with OpIndia.com instead of a big media house.
Vivek Agnihotri basically said that he and Pallavi were unmoved by these threats and ‘words of advice’. They went with their heart.