The way you will respond to a film which goes down a much less beaten path in Bollywood — placing a young woman with autism at the centre of the narrative — will depend upon a couple of things. Your ability to suspend disbelief, and how much, or how little, you know about the condition, which Tanvi (Shubhangi Dutt) lives with.
Only the most curmudgeonly will refuse to smile back at Tanvi when she decides on the impossible: join the Indian Army, and salute the flag at the stunningly beautiful, formidably out-of-reach Siachen outpost. It was her father’s (Karan Tacker) dream, and now that he isn’t in this world, she makes it her mission. Will her bemused grandfather, retired Army man Col Raina (Anupam Kher) help her, or hinder her?
It’s not that Tanvi The Great, in which Kher plays a pivotal role, along with assuming director duties, doesn’t try hard to be winsome. Dutt takes on the near-impossible job of portraying a disability which is perhaps the hardest of all for a ‘normal’ person because of its complex nature. And does well enough, within the constraints of a mainstream film, and the plot’s implausible leaps.
We meet Tanvi as she is trying to find her feet, quite literally, in a situation that is strange for her. She has had to move, temporarily, to her dadu’s house in Lansdowne, even if she decides to address him as Colonel Raina, while her ‘autism expert’ mom (Pallavi Joshi) is away on an extended trip to the US for a conference. The transition is not easy, but the fact that after a few bumps, Tanvi manages to settle in, tells us that she can navigate human interaction, one of the most difficult things for people on the autism spectrum, however capable they may be in other spheres.
Kher, who returns to direction after more than twenty years (Om Jai Jagdish came out in 2002) adopts a fuss-free approach and a welcome restraint, at least in the first half, where he learns the ways of her grand-daughter, with initial trepidation (‘kaise handle karoonga’, he tells his daughter-in-law, ‘tum apni trip postpone kar do’), and then cautious acceptance. The clinical ‘handling’ turns to something warmer, more a connection than just care-taking.
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The ensemble cast — Boman Irani as a music teacher, Arvind Swamy as a tough Army trainer, Jackie Shroff as a senior Army official, Nassar as the benign officer in charge of recruitment, as well as ‘Games Of Thrones’ actor Iain Glen — is drawn sketchily; their only job is to act as enablers for Tanvi, and for her to realise her dreams.
Kher is a good enough actor to keep us with him, even if he and his writing team dream up occasional exaggerations in place of realistic capabilities. There’s a post-interval meander, making us feel the stretch, while grappling with the question: can a person with autism join the forces? You see the film’s cutesy, simplistic arcs, but you also see that it has heart, just like the recent neurodivergence-celebrating ‘Sitaare Zameen Par’, even if it keeps darting off into patriotic flourishes.
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It’s the kind of film which leaves you conflicted. You can be gobsmacked at the enormity of Tanvi’s achievements (spoiler alert: for a person who has trouble getting over a doorsill, Tanvi leaping into a car teetering on the edge of a cliff to save the life of a driver, boggles the mind). And yet you end up rooting for her, and those like her: if she can do it, maybe someone else can too.
You hope that this — warmth and acceptance — is pretty much the sentiment that the film will leave the viewers with, even if Tanvi appears more eccentric and awkward than straight-up challenged in places, with the ability to set aside those difficulties for the job at hand, which is hard to swallow. But then she gets there, and you want to say good job, Tanvi, well done.
Tanvi The Great movie cast: Shubhangi Dutt, Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Arvind Swamy, Pallavi Joshi, Jackie Shroff, Karan Tacker
Tanvi The Great movie director: Anupam Kher
Tanvi The Great movie rating: 2.5 stars
