Save
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
AAA
Arnold Dix’s life is boring, but he knows exactly who he thinks should play him in the movie about to be made about it.
“Can I be really frank here? I said, ‘let me play me … please, let me play me’,” says the 63-year-old tunnelling expert who shot to international fame in 2023 for his role in the rescue of 41 workers trapped inside a collapsed road tunnel in the Himalayas.
And how did the producers respond? “They’re rolling their eyes and laughing their heads off. ‘No chance.’ It’s taken me a while to figure out why it’s so funny, but now that I’ve taken more interest in the film, I understand it would probably be wrong for me to play me.”
The Silkyara 41 team (from left): Producers Aamir Khan and Mitu Bhowmick Lange, director Kabir Khan, engineer Arnold Dix and producer Aparna Purohit.Justin McManus
The film in question is Silkyara 41, named for the tunnel site and the number of workers trapped inside. Announced on Thursday to mark the launch of this year’s Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, and to coincide with the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the city, it looks set to become the first feature film made under the recently signed co-production treaty between India and Australia.
Mitu Bhowmick Lange is producer of the Australian end, with Aamir Khan heading the Indian side. Kabir Khan (no relation) is set to direct, with the script being steered by Andrew Anastasios (The Water Diviner, Jack Irish, The Twelve).
It was Lange’s husband who first alerted her to the story of the road workers, the collapsed tunnel, and the Australian who flew in by helicopter to help rescue them. “He heard Arnold speaking on a podcast, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘this would make such a great movie, it’s such a beautiful Australian-Indian story of friendship and collaboration’,” she says.
Arnold Dix became a celebrity in India after safely returning the workers to their families.
By coincidence, not long after that Dix’s agent made contact with Lange, who is also a distributor of Indian movies in Australia and runs the aforementioned festival, with a pitch for a documentary based on his book, The Promise. “But the moment Arnold walked in and we started talking, I was like, ‘no, this is a feature film’,” she says.
There’s no script yet. No cast. No locations. But Lange is confident the film will be in cinemas next year. “Things move fast in India,” she says.
Whoever does play him, Dix, who lives in Monbulk in Melbourne’s outer east, is absolutely clear about one thing: they must not portray him as a white saviour.
Related Article
“I was absolutely not that, and if I had even smelled like I was behaving like that up there, they would have kicked my arse [and] put me on the first chopper out of there,” he says. “And if that’s how I came across [in the film] it would make me feel sick. I mean, god, that would be a fail. Let me write the review if it comes across like that – I’ll give it the rotten tomatoes.”
He was, he insists, “just one little cog in this big machine, and we did something truly extraordinary”.
Though he may be at pains to downplay his own role, Dix wants people to understand clearly just how remarkable the rescue itself was. He’s been involved in other attempts to extract people from collapsed tunnels and mines, he tells me, and it usually doesn’t go well.
“The truth of it is, I’ve never been able to rescue anyone alive before, they always die,” he says matter-of-factly. “That’s what’s so extraordinary about this story, and I think that’s the attraction of it.”
Though the odds are always against you, he adds, whenever he or anyone else in the community of “underground people” gets the call, they do what they can.
Arnold Dix won the hearts of people in India when he got a blessing at a local temple.
“There’s no money, there’s no contract, you’ve got no authority, it’s just people helping one another.”
That it worked out in this instance gives Silkyara 41 the makings of a potential feelgood hit. But it’s the effort that Dix hopes resonates with people, as much as the outcome.
“I really hope the movie makes people celebrate the inherent decency of being a human being at a time when mostly all we hear about are arseholes,” he says. “You know, we rescued everybody, and they’re all fine, and at a time when the world is so batshit crazy it’s great to celebrate some decency and niceness.”
The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne runs August 13-23. Details: iffm.com.au
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
Save
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
From our partners