FI LM: AN ELEGY FOR AAP
In one of those frequent demonstrations of the wrongheadedness of the Central Board of Film Certification ( CBFC), the august censors told the makers of An Insignificant Man, a documentary about the flashing, firecracker ascent of the Aam Aadmi Party in 2013, to procure no- objection certificates from Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal and Sheila Dikshit before the film could be released. Why do we continue to suffer this toadying, officious body, an anachronism in any age but particularly one in which so much is available without interference online?
Having taken an entire lap of the film festival circuit, from Toronto to Brooklyn to Copenhagen, Warsaw and Sheffield, An Insignificant Man opens in Indian cinemas on November 17 to audiences inured to, perhaps even contemptuous of, the spectacle of AAP. Meteoric as the party’s rise was, it’s hard to believe it is a week or so away from its fifth birthday. Can you feel nostalgia for a phenomenon that is five years old? An Insignificant Man proves you can, taking a close- up view of AAP’s formation, of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. Except AAP is more like a caterpillar that resists, heroically, any process that would transform its ragtag scruffiness into something so ethereal, so lapidary as a butterfly. The film ends at the point at which AAP formed a minority government in December 2013, dissolving it just 49 days later to mount an illconsidered bid to make an impact on the national scene.
Watching this film from the perspective of 2017— when so much water has passed under the bridge, when Kejriwal’s foil in this documentary, the urbane Yogendra Yadav, has long ceased to be part of AAP— is to revel once more in the possibility AAP represented, the break it claimed it was making from politics as usual. We know that this initial promise has been corroded, worn down by compromise and an ugly pragmatism. Kejriwal, an endearing figure in this film, the ordinary man sent to prick the pomposity not just of the political establishment but the media too, is now as megalomaniacal as any politician, too used to the company of a retinue of sycophants and yes- men.
Funny and paced like a thriller, An Insignificant Man deserves your attention. Kejriwal and his coterie should take note as well, to remind themselves of who they once were and of the energy and goodwill they are frittering away.