Much of Vikrant Massey’s The Sabarmati Report feels like a concocted echo chamber. It can best be understood as a plethora of different voices which lack a resonant capacity to ever unify as one. Its disjointed filmmaking is felt right in the opening portions when Samar Kumar (Vikrant) gives a short speech in the courtroom and most of it is muffled in the incredibly loud background score. Perhaps it is an indication of all that is going to follow, where there will be dependence more on sentiment than narrative relief; where the dialogue will hide beneath a layer of self-righteous haze, spilling out Hindi words like ‘Patrakarita’, ‘Sacchai’, ‘Itihas’ and ‘Bharat’ whenever needed; where characters will become mere tools to create shallow sensation and even the ‘truth’ will stop ringing true.

Its intentions become clear in how it blurs the line between reality and fiction, which is seen in the way the characters are described. For instance, in her introductory scene, Manika Rajpurohit (Ridhi Dogra) interviews the US president in the aftermath of 9/11, asking certain critical questions in an awkwardly put-together sequence. She is a liberal, English-speaking journalist who hosts a prime-time show at EBT News. A few moments later, she is shown to be a sellout who ‘twists facts’ as she reports about the Sabarmati train incident, where a coach carrying Hindu kar sevaks caught fire in the quaint town of Godhra. Opposing her tactics is Samar, a Hindi film journalist accompanying her as a videographer to cover the incident. When he goes all the way to create his own report about the incident, it is not telecast. More so, he is jailed for a night on a complaint filed by the news channel. Enraged, Samar turns into an alcoholic as his girlfriend leaves him and his life comes to a standstill.

Starring: Vikrant Massey, Ridhi Dogra and Raashii Khanna

Director: Dheeraj Sarna

Throughout the film, it is not difficult to assess when facts stop and farce takes over. An opposition party politician discusses the incident with another dressed as Sonia Gandhi. “Is Mushkil ko ham apna ek mauka bana sakte hai (We can turn this problem into an opportunity)”, he says to her poker face.  

The directness with which it plays out feels more malignant than honest. There is a sense of randomness to everything that transpires. An extended sequence follows right after the visuals of the Godhra train burning are shown, where the ‘glories’ of India are noted in the aftermath of the tragedy. Kalam becoming the president and Modi’s triumph as the chief minister of Gujarat are among the highlights. Later, a shadowed figure of the then CM is shown meeting the ‘sellout’ journalists and resisting an offer of friendship, thereby emerging as the hero. By creating such fictional enemies and allies in politicians and journalists, the film seems to present an alternate history. What actually happened becomes of lesser importance than what the makers want to disseminate. It is not difficult then to debunk any investigative report; just bring up some juvenile logical fallacies. And there’s the charged-up Vikrant Massey monologue in the end to seal the deal.

Vikrant becomes a version of his character from 12th Fail here minus the same charm and rigor. Much of his personality is left open to interpretation. At times, he carries a wave of indifference as he constantly drinks and says questionable things. On the other hand, he is also the overly proud moral voice of the film. His performance stays earnest, yet the political indoctrination that it slides through is difficult to digest. 12th Fail created a wholesome image of the actor and with The Sabarmati Report, he turns bitter. Raashii Khanna stays believable as an investigative journalist teaming up with Samar to re-visit the incident five years later. Ridhi shows conviction too, playing a character that better suits a dramatic TV soap than a film. But then subtlety is not the virtue which the film claimed to possess anyway.

It was earlier directed by Ranjan Chandel, who left the project due to creative differences as he didn’t agree to some of the changes suggested by the makers. It is now credited to television writer and actor Dheeraj Sarna, who joined as a replacement. Perhaps it is the shifting of hands that explains the deafening noise which the film carries. It is the repetition in the narration of the ‘hidden’ events all along that is striking. It is not enough for Samar to spell out his ‘findings’ before the court; it has to end with a visual depiction of ‘the conspiracy’, which it concludes caused the train to burn. Then, Vikrant starts to pronounce the names of the 59 people who died. It is really tragic to imagine children, women and men getting suffocated to death within the corridors of the train that day. Yet, the film doesn’t rest there. The last image is that of the recently built Ram Temple in Ayodhya and its coveted gold-enshrined idol of the lord. It wasn’t really about the train victims now, was it?