That ‘Main Atal Hoon’ would be a stroke-by-stroke retelling of the high points of an illustrious political personage comes as no surprise. But the fact that Ravi Jadhav, the director of the marvellous musical ‘Natrang’, reduces this bio-pic of India’s 10th Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to such a rah-rah hagiography is a deep disappointment: the poet-turned-politician, a staunch follower of the RSS, and a committed believer in the concept of the Hindu Rashtra, was a colourful, charismatic character, and this film doesn’t do justice to his multiple facets.

For a section of today’s audience, just the fact that the film — more a step-by-step handbook of how the Hindu Right came to power rather than a deep, layered dive into Atal Bihari’s life and times — exists, will be cause for celebration. Coming as it does, right before the Ram Mandir inauguration, with the Lok Sabha elections down the road, the timing, for the ruling dispensation, can’t be more perfect.

But what we would have liked is a much more rigorous, demanding biography: how did Atal, the schoolboy who became tongue-tied on a stage, become such a skilled orator? How did one little lecture from his father (Piyush Mishra) do the job? How did young Atal become a member of his ‘shakha’, learning to twirl the lathi, while being imbued by the ideology of the Sangh? He became a young man when India was still under the British Raj, and patriotism was in the air, but what stirred his blood, other than his beautiful classmate Rajkumari (Ekta Kaul)?