If you didn’t know about Anand Kumar, does the movie Super 30 inspire you enough by the portrayal of his character to know more about him and his endeavors?
If you knew about Anand Kumar, does this movie in any way further your curiosity and understanding of the person?
I belong to the latter group and unfortunately, my answer is no.
Pick up all the existing material on Anand Kumar, play it against a backdrop of drum rolls and Sanskrit verse chanting, a lot of amplified sound effects, sprinkle a bit of romance and you have given yourself the movie Super 30.
The romantic angle of the characters of Anand Kumar played by Hrithik Roshan and Ritu, played by Mrunal Thakur, I feel, we were better off not knowing because now that I know it, I realise it didn’t add anything to the story or the characterization of Anand Kumar. Maybe, now I know that love was one of the things he sacrificed to mentor his students. Thank you!
Narrated from the perspective of one student from the very first batch of the Super 30, it doesn’t really do anything for the story except that you now know that the student is doing well and carries the story of his teacher’s good deeds forward.
Drama, Drama, Melodrama
The movie Super 30 doesn’t let you sink into the moments that matter as the noise of the background score is extremely distracting and almost always underlining the obvious.
Why can’t movies do away with over dramatization? You had to make the students do an improvised song and performance to trump their elitist notions about English language. And that Hindi is your English was the best song that the movie could come up with? The idea was to make them believe in the power of their individuality and not be intimidated by anything including the English language. By promoting another language or unanimously upholding Hindi, you defeat the purpose of a language being given a status to such an extent so as to be used as a tool of intimidation.
The stereotype for women in film was upheld. The men were bronzed and shown shabbily to symbolize struggle and hardship. However, the same cannot be said for the female characters.
For that matter, except for the protagonist, no character was fleshed out enough.
What I would have liked to know as a viewer was, what was Anand Kumar’s childhood like? How did he navigate his hardships to gain access to the materials of mathematics and sustain his interest?
Half-Hearted Portrayals
The caste bias and the ill treatment stemming from it are very obvious in the movie but it is never delved into or even mentioned explicitly. Why? What is so unspeakable about the caste issue which is otherwise so blatant in society even today? Why should we always sanitize it into the struggle of the rich versus the poor?
The movie mentions the story of Ekalavya and Dronacharya but fails to address the caste bias or any other societal barriers that Anand Kumar or his students are battling or may have battled in their lives. For a movie that drowns you in sound more often than not unnecessarily, how about a few dialogues on the issues that actually matter?
The success of the Super 30 in reality is not that it is able to crack an exam. The real success of the Super 30 lies in the fact that it is able to create a crack in the caste and the resultant class system. It is able to create a crack in the vicious circle of opportunities being robbed due to poverty.
In a world of Rickies, it is able to create spaces and opportunities for Bholus, a comparison brought in the movie, where the Super 30 are the Bholus and the students of Excellence Academy are by virtue Rickies.
The Eternal Struggle Of Real Vs. Reel
The movie does very little to emphasize the real success story of the Super 30. And as a viewer, I was disappointed that I wasn’t more inspired by this material than what I already was by the mathematician.
And if I didn’t know about the mathematician, I saw a movie about a teacher who was apparently was robbed of opportunities only due to financial constraints. Thus, he now teaches students whose only major hurdle seems to be that as well.
Why (only or even) 30? Why does Anand Kumar not accept donation for better infrastructure or even to be able to afford amenities for his students? (Anand Kumar in real life courteously has declined many donations for his institute.)
How about a little glimpse into your student’s current life? In the end credits, if you could have given the current standing of a few of his students from real life, it would have added much more authenticity to the story and garnered much more interest.
Hrithik Roshan is earnest and honest in his portrayal. Only if he was a better performer would the actor and character not be so hard for me as a viewer to amalgamate.
The linear format of story telling not only takes away from the complexity of a person’s journey of a lifetime but also does very little to inform us, engage us and entertain us as an audience.