![]() And yet, despite all this, Newton craves freedom. The final frontier, promising lasting liberation, is a job, where Newton has done well: he’s not only gainfully employed, but he works for the government – the ultimate achievement for a middle-class everyman. The next whiff of freedom came through education: an MSc in Physics. ![]() Named Nutan Kumar at the time of birth, Newton took his first stab at independence by changing his name. Because it means living with, and at times appeasing, the family colliding with rigid social structures following norms – set of actions meant to suffocate, not liberate. But independence doesn’t come easy in a small Chhattisgarh town. Curly-haired, frequently blinking eyes burning with anger, Newton is constantly finding ways to be independent. Marked by flourishes of dark humour, set in a land hosting a long battle between the people and their country, Newton isn’t just political it’s also deeply personal, searing with existential angst seldom seen in Hindi cinema these days. Why do this – or, for that matter, anything at all – and for whom? Success perhaps, in that case, is to just keep going: an idea that is romantic and naïve only in theory. It introduces a young man, shows us his world, sets up a series of obstacles for him to overcome, and changes gears at the last moment, for it’s ultimately not about his eventual success or the lack of it, but whether that success has a larger meaning. Newton is essentially an anti-bildungsroman. A few scenes later, several villagers, one by one, show their inked index fingers to the camera – a gesture that is just that: a gesture, devoid of any meaning or purpose. The line separating democracy and farce is both slender and shrinking, and the end result, flitting between absurd and poignant, not altogether unexpected: The first voter doesn’t know how to vote he’s seen an electronic voting machine for the first time. It looks less like an election and more like a lottery. They’re almost dragged to the polling booth, overwhelmed with a list of politicians, their party symbols, and then told to cast vote. ![]() But a more important question, almost always hanging in the air, is: do the people of the village even want to be saved?Īt one point, Aatma Singh (Pankaj Tripathi), presumably a CRPF officer, accompanied by his subordinates, rummage through the jungles to find voters for the election – many against their own will. Newton, like so many of us, is an outsider in his own country. He wants to do the right thing he wants to be a good man, but he doesn’t understand the people he’s with – not their language, not their history, not their wants. ![]() Much of Newton unfolds in one day, in a span of a couple of hours, detailing Newton’s efforts to conduct a fair and smooth election. He is certainly the centrepiece of the film, but for someone who perpetually finds himself in a whirlpool not of his own making – squaring off against parents to find a suitable wife, warding off callous cynical police officers, putting up with indifferent co-workers – Newton is anything but a hero. But this scene is a bit of an in-joke, because Newton is not a hero. He films Newton, enveloped in a gust of wind, from afar: a new man in an old world, who carries with him hope, idealism and an electronic voting machine. Masurkar, Newton’s director, prods us to hang on to that thought – at least for a bit. (An election commissioner feigned illness at the last moment and dropped out.) Newton, armed with sincerity, wanting to infuse democracy and order in the jungles, cuts a hero-like figure.Īmit V. If not for Newton, it probably wouldn’t have seen an election this year. The last election in the area saw 19 deaths. The villages, comprising 76 eligible voters, are torn by the armed conflict between the Naxals and the Indian government. Quite early in Newton, India’s official entry to the 2018 Oscars, a young government clerk, Newton (Rajkummar Rao), alights from a helicopter and walks towards the heart of darkness, two villages in Chhattisgarh jungles, to conduct a Lok Sabha election. Note: This article was originally published on September 22, 2017, and is being republished in light of ‘Newton’ winning the Best Hindi Film award at the 65th National Film Award.
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