Bikinis, ‘Baby John’, and Atlee’s dialectics

A passing reference to the ‘Besharam Rang’ controversy in ‘Baby John’ prompts the question: how political is Atlee Kumar’s cinema?

Minutes before the interval block of Baby John, I was finally awake. Varun Dhawan’s Christmas day release is a scene-for-scene remake of Vijay’s 2016 Tamil action film Theri. Directed by Kalees, the Hindi update is a disappointing drag, narrating a stale, convoluted story about an ex-cop in hiding, unable to achieve simple things like distinguish Mumbai from Kerala, Dhawan bungling the ‘mass hero’ archetype that Shah Rukh Khan embraced—and aced—in 2023’s Jawan.

Jawan was helmed by Atlee, Theri’s director, who has produced Baby John with his wife Priya Atlee. Despite the stylistic and thematic continuity with past Atlee films, I felt the writer-director’s presence most prominently in one key scene. Rajpal Yadav, playing a comic relief police constable, reels off statistics about India’s entrenched rape culture. Every hour, he says, an average of four women get raped in India. But public memory is too short when it comes to heinous crimes like rape, he adds. “Soon there will be a controversy about a big actress’s bikini and we’ll forget…”

The line is loaded. In 2023, the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan came under fire for a saffron-hued bikini donned by Deepika Padukone in the song Besharam Rang. Hindu groups such as the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) protested the scene, followed by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) directing Yash Raj Films to make changes. The hue and cry did not stymie anticipation for Khan’s comeback vehicle after four years, with Pathaan grossing over ₹ 1,000 crore worldwide.

Baby John does not reference Padukone or ‘Besharam Rang’ by name. Nevertheless, the context is unmissable given Atlee’s track record: Jawan made several allusions to current events that lent a political charge to the boilerplate action thriller. The film addressed, among other topics, farmer suicides, corruption in defense procurement, and electoral clientelism. One of the subplots concerned a Muslim doctor framed for medical negligence, echoing the story of Gorakhpur paediatrician Dr. Kafeel Khan. In fact, Sanya Malhotra, who played the character in Jawan, turns up in a cameo in Baby John.

It’s impossible to read Baby John as a political film, or to take its core message seriously. Like most Hindi cop dramas, the film defends police brutality as the solution to all of society’s woes—from rape to child labour. In a cheeky, self-aware scene, Dhawan’s character pronounces himself a ‘Gandhivadi’ cop, before politely escorting a gang of goons to their deaths. This is par for course for Atlee, many of whose films seem to celebrate vigilantism and extrajudicial justice. In Bigil (2021), for instance, there is a disturbing scene where an acid attacker is given a taste of his own medicine by the film’s protagonists. This is framed as ‘revenge’, and a supposed display of women empowerment, with a righteous Vijay overseeing the proceedings.

Mainstream Hindi cinema today isn’t as socially or politically outspoken as its Tamil counterpart. When I reviewed Jawan positively for this publication, I was told by my Southern colleagues they couldn’t see the hype. Yet, there I was at a second viewing in a Mumbai theatre, marvelling at a scene where Shah Rukh Khan addresses the audience directly, asking them to vote judiciously and not be swayed by religion or creed. Ahead of the 2024 General elections, it felt like Khan airing his stance about polarisation and identity politics. Another scene where he growls, “Bete ko haath lagane se pehle...” seemed like a clap-back at Khan’s own son getting locked up in a drug case.

Atlee has spoken about the political overtones of his films before. “Politics is a part of us, politics should be spoken and if it is hidden its not a democracy,” he was quoted as saying by Times Now. On Jawan’s politics being attributed to Shah Rukh Khan, he had said in another interview: “It is my voice, it is the common man’s voice. You have to be very responsible as a citizen, and I’m not specifying anything…” He added: “I’m saying a message for a lifetime, my films should stand for 100 years.”