Why is Agnihotri’s new film 'The Vaccine War' embargoed?

Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri wrapped up a long pre-release roadshow of his new film The Vaccine War in New Delhi yesterday. Intriguingly, most of those invited for the preview—including this columnist—had seen nothing in the media in the preceding days about the film set during the pandemic, good or bad. An odd silence indeed, given that Agnihotri is a magnet for controversy, and does not shy away from it either as The Kashmir Files brouhaha demonstrated. The subject and treatment of the story provides some clues. Agnihotri says his movie is about a superhero, belying Hollywood’s supposed accusation that India doesn’t make relevant films in that genre. It is tempting to identify Dr Balram Bhargava, the man whose book forms the basis of the film, as that putative hero. Only, his character in the film (played brilliantly by Nana Patekar) himself acknowledges he isn’t. He credits the entire team of virologists. The Vaccine War unabashedly lauds the intrepid scientists of the Indian Council of Medical Research (which Bhargava headed during the Covid 19 pandemic and the race to develop a vaccine) and the National Institute of Virology at Pune, whose head Dr Priya Abraham is played by Agnihotri’s wife and the film’s producer Pallavi Joshi. And as the film focuses on the women at the forefront of the vaccine quest, it is hard for the usual suspects to diss the film. Countless salwar-kameez and saree-clad, bespectacled women scientists are the emerging new superheroines of India, recently applauded for their real-life role in the successful Chandrayaan-3 mission. Indian women are right there alongside the “science non-fiction” male heroes depicted in recent big and small screens such as The Rocket Boys and Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, not to mention Mission Mangal. And they are front and centre in The Vaccine War. The courage and fortitude of what the general population knew as ‘frontline workers’ cannot be overstated. On the one hand there were doctors and healthcare staff fighting a deadly enemy armed with just PPEs and masks. We saw them working and even dying in front of our eyes. And we saluted them by blowing conch shells, ringing bells and drumming thalis—contrary to the misinformation campaign that it was just a silly effort to scare away the virus. On the other hand, there were virologists working furiously to isolate the virus, understand it, and then figure out a way to kill it before it killed us all. That story was not played out before our eyes or made vicariously visible to us via the media and social media. Seeing the very ordinary looking women and men on the stage after the movie, the inevitable conclusion was that superheroes are not in the world of Marvel Comics; they live among us, they are us. It would be foolhardy for even the usual Agnihotri baiters to criticise this film’s subject although they may have issues with the cinematography (as they did in the case of The Kashmir Files) or even the dialogues. They may even try to rope in animal activists on the issue of the testing of the vaccine shown in the film but there is no denying it is a feel-good film, it is about teamwork, dedication and camaraderie, about a good sort of “positivity” in Covid times. The narrative that India in the past few years has been obsessing about its glorious past to the exclusion of reason and rationality is being contradicted by the rise of these new heroines and heroes firmly focused on science and the future—that too, from right here in India not NASA or a foreign pharma laboratory. This film emphasises that the battle against Covid was fought by nothing else but cutting-edge science and the unshakeable belief that “India can do it”. Maybe that is why silence is now the weapon of choice. The unusual lack of buzz about a topic that literally touches us all, points to some unofficial embargo on the film. And as there cannot be an Agnihotri film that does not take aim at a shibboleth, the fact that he has the media and social media in his sights—with a woman at the epicentre as befits the leitmotif of the movie—could be the reason why The Vaccine War has hardly got any pre-release build-up. As all the rest of the characters in what is billed as “A True Story” are very real, it is also hard to believe that the treacherous woman “science reporter” is just a composite, as also the media organisation from which she relentlessly spews misinformation. More so as two thirds of her name and that of her supposedly fictitious media outlet would sound familiar to those who followed the “Twitter wars” over the pandemic and the development of the vaccine. Played with consummate conviction by Raima Sen, the science reporter’s constant negativity about the handling of the Covid-19 crisis and her barely disguised pressure to allow foreign vaccines instead of a “substandard” Indian one triggers total recall. Remember how the race for an indigenous vaccine was portrayed as unnecessary when there were foreign ones “available”? And how “vaccine hesitation” was deliberately played up in India? Visuals of tweets put out by the army of naysayers during that time may have the names blurred out in this film, but those who did keep track—including this columnist—will remember what they had said. After all, it was not that long ago. Seen against the backdrop of the enormous odds against which Indian virologists accomplished what was deemed impossible, the orchestrated social media and media misinformation campaign appears even more heinous. Audiences should foil moves by this brigade to exonerate itself on grounds of “freedom of speech”. The Supreme Court offered media a lifeline by observing in the context of Manipur that, “Making a false statement in an article is not an offence of 153A (Promoting enmity between different groups); it may be incorrect statements” and that “journalists are entitled to put forth a viewpoint.” But giving the media the benefit of doubt (or not) is a personal choice. A new version of “vaccine hesitancy” should not be allowed to be disseminated to deter audiences from watching this film. Seeing the heroines and heroes of The Vaccine War on stage, each emphasising how every member of the team from the peon to the tech assistants to the virologists did their bit, brings to mind what the mountaineer Edmund Hillary famously said: “People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.” The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. 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