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Biopics: Laying the boundaries of creative license

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Facts are dismissed in the name of creativity. Ideas and personalities are altered and introduced to enhance marketability. Till what extent can the adulteration run?

Evolution has been the film industry’s backbone, carving niches throughout of varied interests. The diversified interests have also brought along a plethora of genres for the pleasure of the diverse minds of the world. There’s romance, there’s comedy, and there is thriller and horror. And sitting in the far corner is the convoluted genre of biopics.

Biopics canvass the field of entertainment industry used to glorify great figures or show milestone instances. They say actions speak louder than words, and what better way to bring stories to life than to make the whole world listen through the medium of movies. It sounds convenient, and effective even, but it’s an awry path to tread. With the noble ideology, producers harbour of sending across messages or telling true tales, their intentions are also supplemented by the blatant notion of profitability. How do movies become blockbusters and garner rave reviews by the audience? Exceptional use of dramatics and acing the manoeuvres of story-telling. Not every story at its root has the potential of redundant hysterics, for some of them may rely on the ideas of simplicity and idealism. But, considering that easy and minimalistic stories are hard to sell, they are garnished and embellished in the name of ‘creative license’ to construct a final creation which is unrecognisable to the earlier stage.

Explore the range of biopics Indian cinema has to offer, and these ideas will be starkly highlighted. Be it Akshay Kumar’s Rustom or Sushant Singh Rajput’s M.S. Dhoni, an inclusion of incorrect facts to brew some famous ‘Bollywood drama’ or sheer obliviousness defeats the purpose of the genesis of these movies in the first place. By definition, creative license is the act of dramatising a non-fictional event of the history. As long as you don’t portray a lie on the screen, the movie remains parallel to the original story. But, in order to sell the ‘product’, directors often endeavour to ‘sensationalise’ the existent information, thus including certain elements which may be easily misconstrued.

Biopics seek to tell stories like any other genre, one which is non-fiction and accurate at its core. A simple formula needs to be followed: to tell a true yet dramatic story. How do you do that? Assimilate the theme, avoid the clichés, and stay factually correct. Otherwise, the genre of non-fiction would painfully haze into the enormity of the fictional world.

Saumya Kalia

Image Credits: The Indian Express

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