Of wars, ringside and beyond

Rating: 9/10 (3 January 2017)

Mahavir Phogat leaves the sport at a point with some more to offer to it and some more to receive from it. This incomplete arc leaves a bitter taste on his soul, that just wouldn't go with the eflux of time. It just assumes another form; yearning. The yearning accrues into something bigger, a dream. A dream for a progeny- a son to complete his aspiration, carry his legacy forward. This dream keeps accruing in desperation through the birth of every daughter, till it comes to an eventual halt of acceptance at the birth of the fourth. He genuflects before destiny's hand in fashioning a future in a direction converse to his dream. A few years later, providence springs a surprise at him, in the form of his daughters. As it turns out, they're wrestlers too like their big man. This is enough for him to dust off his locked dream. And he goes after it like a marooned man at a wild boar. Redemption was all that he wanted- the elusive Olympic gold -and begetting a son was the means and not the end to it. Thus begins a fascinating journey of a father who goes on to live his dream vicariously through the achievements of his two daughters.
Dangal is set in a patriarchal system we're so used to despising, just that instead of wrestling had it been cooking and if he was a cook and his ambition was to make it to Masterchef it wouldn't have gained the national veto of being an invigorating movie; especially for families with girl children. As graceful and ambitious as the man was, his underlying chauvinism cannot be ignored. Mahavir manipulates his dreams into theirs, his aspirations to theirs at an impressionable age. They become the monks who're forced into their renunciation to pursue his nirvana. There's something preposterous about sporting achievements- don't know about other countries, but definitely in this part of the world -that colours personal accolades as pride of a nation. Bigger the arena, bigger its subversion into patriotism. Any sport is a spectator event dependent on the emotional gullibility of its fan to thrive. So naturally when a nation is pitted against another at its behest, the similar bifurcation happens in the stands as well. Cheering for a sportsperson representing a nation blurs into national solidarity. For it is the most convenient display of patriotism unlike paying taxes and taking bullets.
Can't remember the last time a lead man walked the screen, so naked of vanity to bring credence to a portrayal.There's a thin line that runs between egotism and mentoring, Aamir Khan's Phogat treads this with absolute precision bringing dignity,grace and empathy to a grumpy man who speaks economically, while constantly finding himself torn between taming his inner demons and his little devils on mud pitches. It's this ego he seeks validation of when he spars with his non abiding elder daughter. Her tresses are shoulder length, her manoeuvres revised. She's no longer the creature of his fashioning, his dreams have dissolved in her indulgences. Age doesn't blunt his resentment- even if it has managed to make his weary limbs, clumsily slow -as he continues to spar. She comes on top and he loses. But this isn't one of those vanilla tropes from mainstream films, where the after taste of a man's loss to his own child is sweet. The sight of a muddy old Phogat gasping for breath in humiliation as his elder daughter stands to taunt is anything, but that. Wrestling transcends beyond the pitch between the two.
There's a scene where Phogat finds himself before a archaic table in a sports federation, he's there to seek funds to support the training of his daughters. The officer in front talks to him in haryanvi almost. Almost because majority of his mouth is in the service of grinding a mothi laddoo from a box he's received from the desperate man before him. He nonchalantly explains the paucity of funds with finger movements for neglected sports like wrestling, especially for women, mockingly. A frustrated Phogat begins to rant about why India fares poorly in the Olympics, when he's cut midway by the officer's abrupt exit for lunch.
It is scenes like this that bring out the odds that were stacked against the real Phogat, the numerous fights he had to take outside the ring- with the condescending villagers, the purists of the game, a sporting system content of mediocrity -to get his daughters into it.It is a story which needed to be told. Dangal tells this story with utmost integrity without circumventing around its protagonist like a demigod. Unlike the Dhoni biopic, which felt like a litany of montages shot for Chivas Regal promotions than a movie, Dangal doesn't sidestep the grey shades of its central characters.It in fact for the most part keeps away from the temptation to celebrate them, instead tells a story that deserves to be celebrated. Even if not for the anthem that played in the final moments, I stood as the end credits began to roll, to doff my hat to- the movie, the people who made it and the ones it was made on. It is that kind of a movie that gets to you. Think it would to most, given the reception it got in the theatre I watched.