So here we are. I don’t review Bollywood movies a lot.
Actually this might be the first one that I am sincerely doing and so you can
say that they have made it big this time. Yes, we are talking about the much babbled
about, much tweeted about and much updated about, “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag” the
biopic of a legendary runner who was crowned the ‘Flying Sikh’. Now I won’t get
into the particulars of the real life story on this one. We will keep it a ‘movie’
review, stick to the purpose. As of where the motivation to watch it comes
from, it was an early morning call and I hadn't even taken a shower when
someone just randomly asked me to go for it and then here we are.
Biopics have always been an important part of the cinema.
Every cinema. Be it any language, biopics help us look into the past from the
perspective of the movie maker and the facts about the life of the person in
scope. They not only serve the purpose of cultural preservation, they also
provide us with the opportunity to make an alternative take upon what had
happened. Alternative journalism is picking up a lot these days and is
certainly remotely linked to alternate perspective biography making. So let’s
get down to it. The movie that a lot of people have been waiting for.
The Intro
You can expect this one. A race. (Meh!) As the title tells
us, it is a movie about a runner and so it makes perfect sense to start it with
a race and more so with a race that our protagonist does not win. The beginning
has the required impact. The force of the scenes is impounding to the senses
and you do get indulged into the process. In fashion of a recent trending dialogue,
“You had my curiosity but now you have my attention.” Talking of what happens
next would be a spoiler and so it would be enough to end this one on that it is
fairly intriguing. There are following sequences of the runner entering into
the army and making a living of pride. From the first half an hour of this
monstrously huge movie, you realize that it is constantly going to shuffle
between the very far past, the far past, the past and the present. Yes, there
are literally flashbacks in flashbacks. It’s like a whole different level of “flashbackception”.
Jokes apart, that innovative style keeps you hugging your seat for long enough.
Experimentation, straight to the point and interpretive cinema, the movie easily snatches an 8 on 10 for this section.
The Plot
Well now. There is nothing new in this plot. You know that
it is going to be about a guy who is going to run the f**k out of every track
on planet. But yes, that doesn't really stop the whole bandwagon from keeping
you entertained. There are beautiful pieces of humor and emotion along with
tragedy and thought assimilation that bring a lot of new perspectives to the
table. That is what I was talking about in the previous review as well. To have
a very simple and predictable plot allows the screenplay writer to experiment
and mingle with the rest of the intricacies of the movie. You have a lot going
on in terms of the aspirations of the runner, they are more defined by the
story than by the character of the protagonist. The order and system of scenes
and therefore the overall plot has a lot to do with the pleasant experience (as
opposed to its simplicity). It will give you a lot of emotional twists and
turns but not many that you just weren't expecting. The depictions of the times
he spent on the rehab camps and his earlier days growing up in the village and
falling in love put a stereotypical Bollywood tag to the whole process. Not
saying that it never really happened, but then you just happen to roll your
eyes on the seat and think, there had to be one right?
For this brave endeavor and the zeal in the plot to carry on with the ability to get you to think about it. The plot is not that bad a job at all. Fetches a 7 on 10.
The Characters
A lot of people are going to jump on me for this one, but
then that’s how I feel about it. Farhan Akhtar has not played such a great role
here. The expressions are stone like. Whenever he smiles it feels as if someone
has given him a tonic. The reason that even after a fallacious role play he
gets so much of applause is, as I told you above, the story. The process of him
rising above everyone is what makes you love the character. The sheer charm of
the victory takes your heart away, the adrenalin that the race pumps is all
that has you going. As for the rest of the characters, the general commanding
the small group of soldiers in the beginning does a great job in entertaining
the audience along with the coach and almost everyone else who has been roped
into the process. There is richness in character because there is diversity in
place. Any less diversity would have made it downright boring. For the simple
yet splendid interplay of people and the taught story line with so much going
on, I give it a whopping 8 on 10 for this section only because more than depth
in character they have dwelled into the expanse and thought laterally, something
that helped in a movie like ‘The Green Mile’ as well which was more about an
amazing story than about an amazing Tom Hanks.
For everything new, for facing the odds of thinking so much and so making everyone work together and in the tandem of the flow and tone of the movie, I give it a 7.5 on 10 for the characters.
The Screenplay
Fabulous. Sweeps all grounds. Haven’t seen an Indian flick
with a better one. Go just to see how shifting from one time frame to the other
can be made so enticing and elegant. They have left no space of jarring scene transitions
and the whole scope of the writers’ pen fits very aptly into the brains of the
audience. Especially when the people of our viewership have the attention span
of a nail and a hammer. Things cannot get better for a director when he has
such a powerful screenplay in hand with such a diverse character pool. But then
in the process of doing everything nice, they face those typical movie sins. Oh
god there are so many! They show the partition time (1947-not that you don’t know,
just mentioned it for the math) where Milkha seems to be somewhere around 13-14
years old at the max. And then the first Olympic that they show he won is said
to take place somewhere in 1953-54 if I am not wrong. This gives us a 6 year
span between the two instances where young Milkha goes from becoming a skinny
Punjabi kid to a fully grown bearded/braided man in the army who is already
winning medals and respect. I is just a little jarring. But even when I get
over that analogy, the place where he goes to drop Sonakshi every day after
fetching water is apparently an 8-10 line broad gauge railway track. Hold on a
moment. Wasn't it supposed to 1950? Where the hell did they get so many lines
from and that too in a remote locality? Never mind. Let’s get over that as
well. But then the movie is full of such stuff. You can see Farhan driving a
2012 model of Bullet back in 1956. That too in Pakistan where he does not have
a valid drivers’ license and not to mention the fact that he found someone to
give him that bike in the first place.
Long story short, the sequence of events a beautifully arranged but sometimes those glitches take away the charm. 8 on 10 (one less than what I wanted to) simply because if they had so much of thinking, a little more wouldn’t have hurt.
The Feels
It feels great. Watching it that way. Seeing him overcome
his obsessions and controversies, moving on, pushing forward and keeping the
spirit high, really makes you feel great. And then the realization dawns on you
that it is indeed a true story. Some of it might be recreation-oriented for
cinematic purposes but then essentially at the core of it, all that really
happened. The movie is densely gratifying and motivating. It has put a new
front to the Indian cinema and more such shall follow from talents hidden from
the camera as of now.
Farhan has done a great job in setting up a stage as well as setting up a standard. I give him 9 on 10 for this path breaking endeavor. Averaging all the sections, we get to an overall ~~ 8 on 10. A must watch, take as many people along because this one is super fun in company.
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