Rocket Boys Overview: India Comes of Age in SonyLIV’s Terrific New Sequence

Rocket Boys — the brand new SonyLIV net collection now streaming — is, largely talking, a masterly act. As a personality drama, Rocket Boys deftly balances the private {and professional} worlds of its twin leads: the daddy of India’s nuclear programme Homi Bhabha (Jim Sarbh, from Made in Heaven), and the daddy of India’s area programme Vikram Sarabhai (Ishwak Singh, from Paatal Lok). Ruminative at occasions, Rocket Boys — written and directed in its entirety by debutant Abhay Pannu — displays on the characters’ inner struggles, pursuits, and challenges. It chronicles their brilliance and perseverance (except for their friendship), nevertheless it’s additionally not afraid to reckon with the truth that Bhabha and Sarabhai did not all the time ship on their guarantees.

Whereas the milder Sarabhai was extra in contact with uplifting the lives of the unprivileged, it is by means of the ferocious Bhabha that Rocket Boys touches upon that everlasting debate about nice minds. Geniuses and males of function — from Michael Jordan to, properly, Bhabha — are egocentric. They do not take into consideration what’s good for everybody, nor do they care about others’ ego, emotions, and psychological state. Bhabha did not turn into the man we all know him by ready round, he grabbed alternatives and pushed ahead. On the identical time, Rocket Boys is sensible sufficient to point out that this lifestyle creates highly effective enemies — although the SonyLIV collection fortunately slides into conspiracy territory deep into its run.

Rocket Boys can be sensible sufficient to acknowledge that the alternatives that got here their approach — and that is true for each Bhabha and Sarabhai — had been partly due to their privilege. The eight-episode SonyLIV collection by no means shies away from dissecting that, although elsewhere, it does get carried away in projecting them as saviours in ways in which really feel too easy.

As a bit of longform leisure, past giving us a window into the confluence of science and politics, Rocket Boys — set throughout three many years, the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s — delivers in sketching out the world of pre- and post-Independence India. It showcases the hopes, wants, aspirations, and calls for of a courageous new India. Nevertheless it’s not all the time a reasonably image. With a mixture of privileged youngsters within the image, Rocket Boys exhibits how elitism paved over egalitarianism in democratic India.

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And elsewhere, Rocket Boys additionally serves as a reminder of how science is so little about science at occasions. Bhabha may need been an amazing physicist, however he was at first, a showman. It is usually accepted that Bhabha overpromised to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (Rajit Kapur, from The Making of the Mahatma). Whereas a few of Bhabha’s rivals had been delivering outcomes and being ignored, Bhabha wooed India’s political elite together with his showmanship. Rocket Boys is miserable proof that individuals would quite put money into one thing cool than one thing that has a greater shot.

All of this comes collectively on the brand new SonyLIV collection due to writer-director Pannu — beforehand an affiliate director on the Amazon Prime Video collection Mumbai Diaries 26/11 — who’s working off a narrative idea from Abhay Koranne (Bhavesh Joshi Superhero). Pannu co-wrote the Rocket Boys dialogues with lyricist Kausar Munir (83, Gunjan Saxena). For somebody who has by no means made a function or longform undertaking, that is assured filmmaking — assured in its skills, Rocket Boys will not be afraid to maneuver at its tempo. Pannu’s path, coupled with Maahir Zaveri’s modifying, is sweet at establishing tone and conveying emotion. They know precisely how lengthy to linger on moments to make you’re feeling what the characters are going by means of, and to trace at what’s left unsaid and occurring past the floor.

Pannu is not the creator on Rocket Boys although. That credit score goes to Batla Home director Nikkhil Advani, alongside his manufacturing banner Emmay Leisure and fellow Rocket Boys producer Siddharth Roy Kapur’s Roy Kapur Movies. That is the second time an Advani undertaking has listed its “creators” on this bizarre corporatised vogue — the aforementioned Mumbai Diaries was the opposite one — the place manufacturing homes are named alongside a person.

Harshvir Oberai’s cinematography, together with Meghna Gandhi’s stellar manufacturing design, conjures the interval period properly on Rocket Boys. And after his immense success with the theme for Rip-off 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story, it is smart that SonyLIV and Rocket Boys group would flip to composer Achint Thakkar. In a few locations, the Rocket Boys soundtrack unknowingly or knowingly evokes a preferred Bollywood rating. However outdoors of that, Thakkar does some nice work — along with (as soon as once more) delivering an beautiful intro theme.

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Ishwak Singh as Vikram Sarabhai in Rocket Boys
Photograph Credit score: SonyLIV

When Rocket Boys opens, it is 1962 and China has simply declared conflict on India. Bhabha and Sarabhai’s relationship is at its nadir. Whereas the pragmatic Bhabha believes India’s finest wager is to announce they’re near creating an atom bomb — as a deterrent — the peaceable Sarabhai is aghast. Satisfied that that is the incorrect strategy, he tenders his resignation. The brand new SonyLIV collection then jumps 22 years again to 1940. Learning at Cambridge, Sarabhai is caught in The Blitz and decides to return to India. Shortly after, due to his father Ambalal Sarabhai’s (Muni Jha) connections, Vikram results in Bangalore on the Indian Institute of Science to do analysis with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist C.V. Raman (Karthik Srinivasan).

Elsewhere in 1940 on the Calcutta Faculty of Science, Bhabha is working as a professor. The institute’s founder Medhi Raza (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) is attempting to recruit him for good, however Bhabha is aware of he is destined for higher issues. He additionally appears to have reservations about Raza’s funding coming from the Muslim League. By the point Sarabhai arrives in Bangalore, Bhabha has established a cosmic ray unit at IIS beneath Raman. He is not all joyful about leaving Calcutta behind although, with IIS’ funding a far cry from Raza was in a position to supply. Bhabha and Sarabhai’s relationships turns right into a mentor-mentee one, whereas the previous additionally develops a rivalry with Raza who feels he is been regarded over at each stage as a result of Bhabha’s privileged origins and showmanship.

Although Raza is a personality created for Rocket Boys, he’s a model of the famend astrophysicist Meghnad Saha who, like Raza, got here from a poor decrease caste household, was a rival of Bhabha’s, and opposed Nehru favouring a privileged class. Raza is not the one fictional character on the SonyLIV collection. Saba Azad performs Bhabha’s uncared for love curiosity Parvana “Pipsy” Irani, whom I think about the creators long-established as a foil to showcase Bhabha’s obsession together with his work, and as a counterpart to Sarabhai’s love curiosity and acclaimed dancer-choreographer spouse Mrinalini Sarabhai (Regina Cassandra). By Pipsy and Mrinalini, Rocket Boys reveals its male leads’ deficiencies within the private division — and it is in a position to attract parallels due to the creation of Pipsy.

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Regina Cassandra as Mrinalini Sarabhai in Rocket Boys
Photograph Credit score: SonyLIV

Rocket Boys’ leads may each be male and its world male-dominated, however the brand new SonyLIV collection by no means loses sight of the very fact that there have been girls on the sidelines who supported Bhabha and Sarabhai — however did not have their care and appreciation reciprocated. And it makes for some sensible humour too, upending conventional romantic overtures to point out how males may be egocentric.

The dynamic between Bhabha and Sarabhai is gratifying and comedic in locations — they banter and take one another’s instances — although Rocket Boys’ efforts at being humorous do not all the time pan out. In an early episode, it takes a smug tone towards the colonial British. I get the concept nevertheless it not solely feels anachronistic, however the shenanigans towards the British are distracting and do not actually serve a function. Aside from to fill some form of patriotism checkbox. It is pointless and a uncommon signal of Rocket Boys going overboard with its materials.

However by and huge, Rocket Boys stays regular because it lifts off into the stratosphere. By its two genius leads, the SonyLIV collection paints the imaginative and prescient and outlook of a newly-independent nation, the place lots of of thousands and thousands envisioned and clamoured for a brighter and larger and equal future for all. Alongside the way in which, it touches upon issues of caste, gender, privilege, faith, and ideologies — topics which can be nonetheless the bedrock of India right this moment.

For all of Bhabha’s exploits although, his guarantees had been left unfulfilled. In an early episode, as Bhabha delivers a passioned speech about power self-reliance — a dream that we’ve got but to understand — and a future the place atomic power will take over from coal in lighting up all of India, Rocket Boys looks like a product of science fiction. In spite of everything, over 70 years later, the nation’s power wants are nonetheless largely fulfilled by coal. As late as final yr, new coal mines had been being auctioned. On high of that, India is the world’s second-largest importer of coal. At current, nuclear energy is chargeable for solely 3 p.c of India’s power. The determine for coal? Over 70. If Bhabha had been alive right this moment, I think about that might be mighty disheartening.

Rocket Boys feels prefer it’s nostalgic for a extra optimistic India — an India that had the world at its ft, an India rising from centuries of oppression, and an India the place pluralism was inspired. An India the place something was potential. In these darkish and miserable occasions the place every part India as soon as stood for is being razed to the bottom, Rocket Boys is each crucial and a response to the nation that we have turn into.

All eight episodes of Rocket Boys launched Friday, February 4 at 12am IST on SonyLIV in India and world wide.