At the same time when Amit Masurkar’s Newton is being lauded for its sheer excellence, it’s claimed that the film is a copy of Iranian movie Secret Ballot. According to a report in NDTV, Rajkummar Rao starrer Newton is uncanny similar to the Iranian film. The report struck out several similarities between plotlines of both the films. Both the films had an honest polling officer and a soldier on election security duty who demotivates the officer.
Amid these claims, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap came out in support of Rajkummar Rao’s Newton. He expressed his views in a funny manner. On Sunday, he tweeted:
"Newton" is as much a copy of "Secret Ballot" as The Avengers is of Watan Ke Rakhwale
Before this, Kashyap seemed to be exhilarated to see the peaking box office numbers of Newton. On Sunday, film trade analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted the news that Newton saw 162% of growth on Saturday, surprassing Sanjay Dutt’s comeback film Bhoomi and Shraddha Kapoor’s Haseena Parkar. Hearing the news, Anurag Kashyap posted on Twitter:
He also got back on those who are questioning Newton for being India’s official entry for Oscars 2018.
However, filmmaker Jaideep Varma and Amit Masurkar cleared the air that Newton is not a copy of Iranian film Secret Ballot. In a Facebook post, Jaideep Varma writes that two films, despite its similarities, have very different souls.
Defending his film Newton, Amit Masurkar spoke to NDTV. He said, “I remember after I wrote the script just before I was going to shoot, a friend told me about Secret Ballot. Since the film was on YouTube I watched bits and pieces but that was very different I felt. A lady polling officer goes door to door. Also, there is some kind of romantic track which is not in Newton. I knew someday people will draw similarities but what can one do? When you write a story there is a possibility that someone else must have written a similar story somewhere in the world.“.
Newton is Amit Masurkar’s directorial which is a political satire exploring the tangled jungles of Chattisgarh. A new government recruit Newton (Rajkummar Rao) is posted in a naxal-inflicted village Kondnar, and is determined to conduct fair elections in the constituency. It released on 350 screens in India on 22nd September 2017.
