There is a difference between ambition and delusion. Ambition often depends on one’s means; delusion, on the other hand, hinges on one’s capability. The Diplomat isn’t an ambitious film for barring the brawny John Abraham from lifting a finger. But it’s certainly delusional for thinking of itself as a desi answer to Argo. There is, however, a more unexpected comparison that the movie invites, without realising that it is guilty of committing the same mistakes that it is so confidently calling out. But more on that later. Directed by Shivam Nair, The Diplomat projects itself as a feminist film, but it is actually a tribute to male ego.
A dramatically inert distillation of a multi-pronged story, The Diplomat takes a typically Bollywood approach to telling a story about a woman’s emancipation and empowerment. It frames its narrative from the perspective of Abraham’s character, India’s Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan, JP Singh. But it is actually the story of Uzma Ahmed, an Indian woman played by Sadia Khateeb, who is conned into marrying a Pakistani man named Tahir. They met in Malaysia, where he was working as a taxi driver. A few months into their relationship, Tahir moved back home and invited her to join him there. But he had an ulterior motive.
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John Abraham in a still from The Diplomat.
He picks her up at the Attari-Wagah border, drives her to a remote location in the mountains, and essentially keeps her prisoner in his house. Uzma discovers that Tahir is running some kind of human trafficking operation; there are several other ‘wives’ in the compound that Tahir regularly abuses. Uzma is spared the horror of being sold off to a warlord because she is deemed too old, at age 28. With the help of another prisoner, Uzma is able to contact her friends in Malaysia — we never see her family, for some reason — and is advised to hatch an escape plan. She manipulates Tahir into taking her to the Indian embassy in Islamabad, where she is able to seek refuge and request repatriation.
Uzma’s kidnapping unfolds in a flashback, as she tells JP what she went through and waits for him to pull the strings necessary to facilitate her return to India. JP doesn’t judge, but the movie expects you to; it has a character overtly call Uzma foolish for falling into such an obvious trap. But that’s besides the point. The bigger issue with the movie is that it regularly undermines Uzma’s own struggles by presenting her story through JP’s eyes. By doing this, The Diplomat robs her of agency; it retroactively snatches her narrative away from her. What we’re seeing, instead, is JP’s version of events. Abraham doesn’t resort to his typical gung-ho action — there is, however, a car chase — but he certainly plays a saviour figure to a damsel in distress.
Director Shivam Nair seems incapable of understanding that JP Singh isn’t (and shouldn’t be) the protagonist of this story. A real movie would’ve restricted him to being a tertiary character who appears in the final 10 minutes and makes a few phone calls. By projecting him as the hero — quite literally — the movie ignores the trauma that Uzma actually went through. We don’t even get a glimpse of her folks, or of what her life used to be like in India. She exists only to be abused, to be rescued, and to be used as a mascot for the Machiavellian machinations unfolding around her. Heck, even her escape from captivity, the movie implies, was concocted by a man — her friend’s husband.
Meanwhile, JP gets a traumatic backstory of his own, and numerous (comedic) interludes where he talks to his young son in India. Why must we know this? Why is this important? Wouldn’t cutting away to Uzma’s worried family be a more responsible use of precious screen time? She constantly needs to be reminded to stand up for herself, to not be afraid of Tahir. She doesn’t come to this realisation herself, but needs to be nudged out of passivity by JP. A ridiculous courtroom scene inexplicably puts him at the front and centre of the frame; at one point, he protectively shields Uzma from an enraged Tahir. Ben Affleck did nothing of the sort in Argo. He satisfied his urge to be super-heroic in a separate movie.
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Sadia Khateeb in The Diplomat.
In structure, The Diplomat mimics — of all things — Mad Max: Fury Road. The action masterpiece subverted expectations by revealing that Mad Max is only a facilitator in Furiosa‘s story. Like Uzma, she, too, escaped captivity and made a mad dash to safety. But The Diplomat does the opposite; it injects a man into story that he has no authorship over. The movie doesnt even adhere to its own internal logic. It ends with a scene in which JP jumps behind the wheel of a car and personally drives Uzma to the Indian border as they’re chased by Tahir and his men. Amazed at this tonal shift, you’re left with no choice but to wonder what sort of diplomacy JP is meant to have displayed at all. If launching into an action scene was always on the table, why didn’t he throw a punch or two at Tahir sooner?
The Diplomat falls into the same category as recent films such as Satyaprem Ki Katha, Mr & Mrs Mahi, and the tragically misguided Bawaal. Incidentally, Khateeb, who made such a strong debut in the film Shikara, followed it up with a supporting role in the Akshay Kumar-starrer Raksha Bandhan, which remains one of Hindi cinema’s most egregious examples of ‘fridging’. This when a female character is maimed or murdered in order to serve as motivation for her male counterpart to evolve. And while Uzma doesn’t die, she isn’t allowed to live either. The biggest mistake that The Diplomat makes is revealing the real JP at the end. Whatever disbelief you’d managed to suspend in the previous two hours is immediately undone the second you lay eyes on the nondescript norm-core dad that JP really is. Don’t be surprised if Abraham decides that he should play Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri in a future film based on Operation Sindoor.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
