Dr Tatyaa Lahane review: An ego massage you can totally avoid

Biopics are all the rage now. In the past five years, Hindi cinema has seen a bunch of sports biopics — MS Dhoni: The Untold Story (2016), Azhar (2016), Dangal (2016), Mary Kom (2014), Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013) — while 2017 saw gangster films Haseena Parkar and Daddy.

While Marathi cinema has usually explored political and social figures as subjects for biopics — Lokmanya Ek Yugpurush (2015), Dr Prakash Baba Amte (2015), Mahanayak Vasant Tu (2015), Yashwantrao Chavan (2014) — there have also been much-loved biopics like Harishchandrachi Factory (2009) and Bal Gandharva (2011).

Now director Virag Madhumalati Wankhede brings to the screen the life and times of Dr TP Lahane, a village boy who fought crippling circumstances to become a renowned ophthalmologist. Dr Lahane, former dean of Grant Medical College and JJ Hospital in Mumbai, seems to have commissioned a 150-minute-long PR video to fellow multi-record-maker Wankhede.

The film follows the poverty-stricken Lahane clan that struggles to eat even one meal a day. The oldest of seven siblings, Tatyaa is different. He is brilliant at his studies and, more importantly, aspirational. He is well aware of his sorry state but won’t stop at anything to make a better life for himself and his family. Fighting all odds, he becomes a doctor known for his cataract medical camps in the interiors of Maharashtra.

His efforts at rural health care earned him a Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India. There is a scene in the film where Dr Lahane is told about being awarded the Padma Shri but is asked to cough up Rs10 lakh for the honour. He fires the caller, presenting himself as a righteous citizen.

The film is full of such incidents that glorify the man, often making the narrative sugary enough to pass off as a publicity exercise. For example, in the childhood scenes Tatyaa harps about wanting to educate himself. As an adult he takes it upon himself to educate his siblings. And during his medical practice, he preaches about the need for discipline and determination.

The makers smartly leave out the controversial events from Dr Lahane’s life, when he made news for the wrong reasons. From a case under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act to his alleged role in the sensational Sheena Bora murder, none of these tricky incidents find a mention in the perfect rags-to-riches story of Dr Lahane.

Some events are overly dramatized, repetitive, and give a sense of being placed one after another only to glorify the personality that is Dr Lahane. Many of these are unexplained, even illogical. For example, when a legislator comes to Tatyaa to get his daughter married to him, there is no explanation of how and why the MLA got to know of this one poor, hardworking student in a medical college with probably a thousand others.

The fairly sanitized family hut, Tatyaa’s mother’s crisp and clean sarees and jewellery give away the lack of attention to detail. We would have scarcely realized the family was starving if the filmmaker hadn’t shown the good doctor's sister die of jaundice because she ate mud.

Every scene is carefully crafted, and cinematically it’s a good film. Wide swathes of cracked, barren land, beautiful rock formations amid water bodies, narrow roads lined with trees, and village scenes are shot artistically. But there is only so much good camerawork can salvage.

The artistes, Makarand Anaspure as Dr Lahane, Alka Kubal as his mother, and Nishigandha Wad as Dr Ragini Parekh, do a decent job but seem restricted by the content. It’s a welcome change to see Anaspure deliver a subdued performance. Of the child artistes, the boy who plays the teenaged Tatyaa is worth a mention for holding his own in emotional scenes.

While the beginning credits shows footage of director Wankhede receiving awards for a bunch of records, the end credits show Dr Lahane at various medical college events and camps where people are singing his praises.

The makers of Dr Tatyaa Lahane employ every trope of sympathy there is in cinema. It is a 150-minute ego massage that you can easily avoid.