Newton’s Last Discovery
THIS YEAR, INDIA SENT A WAR MOVIE to the Academy Awards, though the prize jury may not have realized it.
On its surface, the small-budget sleeper hit Newton is a wry, tightly wound comedy about the absurdities of Indian democracy. It may seem chiefly notable for breaking out of the shallow, conservative mold of mainstream Indian cinema. But its odd-man-out story—about a government clerk struggling to conduct an election deep in the heart of a central Indian jungle—doesn’t flinch from exposing the costs of India’s long counterinsurgency against its ongoing 50-year-old Maoist rebellion.
Newton was a good choice for the Oscars’s foreign-language film category: It should speak to audiences in democracies everywhere that are experiencing crises of self-belief. But it is also a bold choice for the Film Federation of India to send abroad—particularly at a moment when the mood of the nation, encouraged by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, tends toward thin-skinned nationalist sentimentality.
One of the speculations laid to rest by its decision was that selectors might choose, instead, to send 2017’s nationwide blockbuster , a splashy fantasy about a muscular Hindu hero who reclaims his kingdom from corrupt rivals trying to cheat him of
