Films about natural disasters and industrial accidents have a stock set of characters to aid dramatisation: insensitive overlords, innocent victims, helpless doctors and aid workers, grubby-handed politicians, and journalists to take notes for today and tomorrow. In Bhopal:Prayer for Rain, the role of the scribe who will record for posterity the horrors that followed the gas leak from the Union Carbide India Limited plant on the night of December 2, 1984, is played by Kal Penn, sporting a moustache, the most disco of shirts to be found in all of central India, and an accent out of The Party. Penn is an honest scam-busting reporter whose two-sided rag represents independent media in the city that has become synonymous with the tragedy.
There’s another superfluous journalist in this movie, played by Mischa Barton, and at least one more ramp model woman passing herself off as a slum-dweller. The washed-out colour palette and jerky camerawork are out of place in a period piece and mark this movie for television viewing.
Despite its many shortcomings, Ravi Kumar’s 96-drama treats its subject with seriousness and respect. The movie has been released to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of one of the worst industrial accidents in the world. It was also one of the most avoidable, in the film’s telling. Had Union Carbide followed safety norms at its plant, had its head office not pushed the gas and chemical unit’s capacity beyond acceptable limits to combat dipping sales, had its management listened to officials closer to the shop floor, and had a report clearly warning of a leak been heeded, there might have been no anniversary to mark.
Many ifs and buts
Kumar’s film is strongest when it lays out the various what ifs. Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain is part human drama and part forensics report. The human angle is represented by characters such as Rajpal Yadav’s Dilip, a daily wager whno represents the employment opportunities created by Union Carbide in Bhopal. Yadav plays his part of the slumdog who will never be a millionaire to the hilt, but the better part of the movie lies in the non-sentimental bits, when Kumar reveals with quiet force the layers of careless neglect and wilful oversight that caused deaths and injuries in the thousands.
Martin Sheen’s Union Carbide chairperson Warren Anderson (Martin Sheen) is as wily as one would expect a businessman with both eyes on the bottomline to be, and it’s to the film’s credit that he is no easy villain. Other characters stand out in the ensemble cast: Manoj Joshi’s government doctor has the terrible job of trying to save the victims who come pouring into hit hospital after the gas leak, while Joy Sengupta plays a conscientious safety officer who smells disaster before it actually arrives. The movie’s message is clear, and Kumar deftly explains the complicated links between short-sighted boardroom decisions, corruption among the political class, the corporate culture of profit at any cost, and workplace accidents that could have been avoided if somebody cared.
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There’s another superfluous journalist in this movie, played by Mischa Barton, and at least one more ramp model woman passing herself off as a slum-dweller. The washed-out colour palette and jerky camerawork are out of place in a period piece and mark this movie for television viewing.
Despite its many shortcomings, Ravi Kumar’s 96-drama treats its subject with seriousness and respect. The movie has been released to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of one of the worst industrial accidents in the world. It was also one of the most avoidable, in the film’s telling. Had Union Carbide followed safety norms at its plant, had its head office not pushed the gas and chemical unit’s capacity beyond acceptable limits to combat dipping sales, had its management listened to officials closer to the shop floor, and had a report clearly warning of a leak been heeded, there might have been no anniversary to mark.
Many ifs and buts
Kumar’s film is strongest when it lays out the various what ifs. Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain is part human drama and part forensics report. The human angle is represented by characters such as Rajpal Yadav’s Dilip, a daily wager whno represents the employment opportunities created by Union Carbide in Bhopal. Yadav plays his part of the slumdog who will never be a millionaire to the hilt, but the better part of the movie lies in the non-sentimental bits, when Kumar reveals with quiet force the layers of careless neglect and wilful oversight that caused deaths and injuries in the thousands.
Martin Sheen’s Union Carbide chairperson Warren Anderson (Martin Sheen) is as wily as one would expect a businessman with both eyes on the bottomline to be, and it’s to the film’s credit that he is no easy villain. Other characters stand out in the ensemble cast: Manoj Joshi’s government doctor has the terrible job of trying to save the victims who come pouring into hit hospital after the gas leak, while Joy Sengupta plays a conscientious safety officer who smells disaster before it actually arrives. The movie’s message is clear, and Kumar deftly explains the complicated links between short-sighted boardroom decisions, corruption among the political class, the corporate culture of profit at any cost, and workplace accidents that could have been avoided if somebody cared.