Fictionality as Augmenting Authenticity: A Demonstrative Analysis of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi

Biopics, re-enactment of true lives on screen as it can be defined, has emerged and evolved as early and dynamic as cinema itself in alignment with the social and historical contexts of production. As they appeal to present lived experiences through a highly popular medium, they acquire historicising and commercialising tendencies which in turn influence their fictionality. So also does the director’s creative agency that significantly determine their making. The resulting fictionality does not tamper with narratives of lived experience as many critics argue, but complements them. The paper proposes and defines a new term, ‘dilation technique’ to analyse how fictionality complements biopics in particular, and life writing in general. To demonstrate the use of this technique, the paper takes up for analysis, Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022) of Sanjay Leela Bhansali that narrates incidents from the life of the brothel Madam, Gangubai who lived and worked in Kamathipura, Mumbai sometime between 1940 and 1980. In so doing, it establishes that fictionality in the film complements the life story of Gangubai with imagined perspectives of Gangubai, subjectivity, extended authenticity, the status of ‘a classic tale of a selfless leader’ and a scope to view Gangubai’s life as a ‘journey towards acceptance of sex workers in the society’. On the whole, it argues that fictionality in life writing enhances the narratives in such a way that it heightens the effect of the lived experience.