G.D.N

When the credits started rolling on GDN, and they showed pictures of the real GD Naidu, one thing became immensely clear. The effervescent, playful, curious, and wildly interesting man in the pictures did not feel like the one we saw in the film.

G.D.N. encapsulates all this and more. But it recounts one event after another, almost like checking off milestones, instead of weaving them into a cohesive narrative. In fact, G.D.N. often feels like a Wikipedia page stretched into a feature-length screenplay.

R Madhavan's GDN does the first job adequately. By the time the credits roll, you know the legend of GD Naidu. But the second job, making you feel the forgetting in your bones, the film rarely manages to achieve.

On the whole, GDN - which should've been a deeply moving biopic - ends up as an informative, visually beautiful but emotionally distant story.

Madhavan delivers a compelling performance as inventor GD Naidu in an ambitious biopic that does not fully realise its emotional potential.

Naidu's instinct was to take apart whatever he admired to see how it worked. The film admires him too much to try it.