Dangal REVIEWS| BOX OFFICE Updates - Page 18

If sporting films were pitted against one another, Dangal would be champion, says Raja Sen.

This summer, India learnt the name Produnova.

An intricate gymnastic move named after a legendary Russian athlete, the Produnova is a vault so complex that only five gymnasts have actually executed it.

The Olympic gold medallist and reigning queen of the sport, American gymnast Simone Biles shuns it entirely, saying, 'I'm not trying to die.'

This is a reflection of both the systematic way in which international athletes train where they can measure the odds, and of its stark contrast with Indian athletes -- especially female stars like Dipa Karmakar, who rocked the Produnova at the 2016 Games -- and the way they face each round on the world stage with an absolute go-for-broke mentality, never sure of another chance.

Dangal, Nitesh Tiwari's film about the marvellous Phogat sisters who have won wrestling golds for India, captures this mindset brilliantly.

A film about real-life sporting champions can often be a predictable guts-and-glory tale, but instead of creating contrived points of conflict, this film masterfully brings the actual struggle into relief: The paucity of funds, the lack of opponents to train with, a belief in technique which may be dated.

The film automatically feels original.

An authentic wrestling mat becomes the subject of dreams.

A local wrestling promoter claims more villagers will turn up to see women fight than to look at lions.

He's right. The villain in Dangal is the mindset.

The first proponent is their father.

Mahavir Singh Phogat, a former national wrestling champion, wants sons to further his legacy and do what he never could, to win wrestling golds on an international level, but -- despite all the 'unfailing' plans thrust his way by village know-it-alls -- much to his chagrin, he keeps on producing daughters.

It is only when he realises girls can win golds that the epiphany drives him into a fascistic tiger-dad, pushing his daughters to breaking point. Richard Williams -- father of Venus and Serena -- had drawn up a 78-page plan to turn them into tennis legends, and started pushing his girls into the sport as early as four, later banning them from boyfriends and decapitating any Barbies that may come their way.

Mahavir Phogat, who mercilessly chops off his daughters' hair and exposes them to much jeering, gets it.

Aamir Khan plays this phenomenal character, both fascinating and flawed, a winner utterly sure of his beliefs who bends the world around him to his will. It is the performance of a lifetime, and Khan -- incredibly buff when young, proud and paunchy when old -- is sensational as he shows them the moves and imparts knowledge to the girls.

With his wrist resting on his hip like a too-full teapot, his Phogat seems always to be thinking, planning, focussing. He knows what he's doing.

Eschewing vanity and leading man cliche, Khan shows us commitment to the part and, most impressively, the ability to -- as they say in scripted wrestling -- eat a loss.

It's stunning.

At one point he asks for his nephew to help the girls train, and the boy's father confesses that he doesn't want to say yes but doesn't dare say no. This is good enough for Khan, who immediately shoves the boy into all manner of servitude.

It is this incredibly put-upon nephew (Aparshakti Khurrana) who narrates the film, his idiomatic turns of phrase lacing the well-written film with the rich, local strains of Haryanvi humour, a dryish humour so dependent on language and tone.

We are told, for instance, about an alarm clock cunningly being led astray, and, quite neatly, about the stubbornness of the god who wouldn' grant Phogat his long-desired sons.

Not that he needed them. Geeta and Babita Phogat are dynamite from the get go, a couple of girls traumatised by the training regimen until they realise that winning is better than golgappas -- which they are not allowed to eat anymore.

The two girls are played by Zaira Wasim and Suhani Bhatnagar who win us over with innocence and exasperation before showing us how expertly they move. The wrestling choreography in the film is excellent and strikingly credible, and the girls are great here, and even better when they grow up into Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sanya Malhotra.

Mat skills aside, both girls give rousingly strong performances, with Fatima's Geeta pulling off a fine, fine moment with Aamir as father and daughter wordlessly inhabit a phone conversation. He grunts, she sobs -- as may many of us.

One of the best performances in Dangal comes from Sakshi Tanwar, who plays the hapless mother, trying to strike a balance between an unyielding father and daughters who just want to be girls a little longer.

Her character, literally living between rocks and hard places, is realistically short on dialogue, but her eyes are incredibly expressive as she wears futility -- and triumph -- on her face.

The film has a fine ensemble, and a special mention must be made of casting director Mukesh Chhabra for peopling it with such authentic faces and characters who say so much even when wordless.

The film opens with a tussle in an office, and the bit actors -- the woman in pink smiling shyly at the men circling each other, the old man looking admiringly at Aamir Khan as he buttons up his shirt -- are wonderful.

In a film so evocatively muddy, it's sad to see Dangal create a cardboard villain caricature at the end, and to throw in an absurd climactic scene involving a locked door -- a bit of melodrama jarringly out of place in this grounded narrative -- but even this stumble leads to the girls finding their own way, liberated from any mansplaining. They do it their way.

Pritam's soundtrack is a solid one, and Sethu Sriram's textured cinematography oscillates between the poetic -- there is a lovely slow-motion shot of dirt from a shaking head flying across a red sky -- and the powerfully prosaic, with the wrestling scenes looking startlingly real.

This is by far the most credible an Indian sport film has ever felt, with even the commentators getting in on the action, giving most of us a tutorial in how to watch the sport.

Dangal teaches us where rainbows lie in wrestling, and while it is a celebration of true greats -- and true grit -- this isn't about one sport.

India needs to watch this film for the way it puts the 'her' in 'hero.'

Rediff Rating:

Let's get one thing out of the way. Dangal is a film built on simplicity, rock-solid single-mindedness and an unswerving sense of good. Which is why, in these uncertain times, it will soar.

But is it really the film that it could have been? The answer to that, unfortunately, is a firm no.

Dangal, as a biopic, does the unforgivable and ends up being a star vehicle. Dangal may be the story about the "incredible journey of the Phogat sisters", as Mahavir Singh Phogat (Aamir Khan) himself says, but the hero of the piece is Aamir Khan.

The thing about sports biopics is that they have a set template. It's always going to be a story of the underdog who triumphs all odds. No one cares about a mediocre player's journey to anonymity. The audience already know how the story will end, the trick is in telling it well. While telling the story of the Phogat sisters, Tewari follows the most obvious template.

In the Balali village in Haryana, Mahavir Singh Phogat is a name that commands respect. He is a legendary wrestler, who almost brought worldwide glory to the village. Phogat, who is itching for the glory he was denied, wants a son he can train to wrestle for the country. But instead he has had four daughters.

This makes the Phogat household a family in waiting.

Every time wife Daya (Sakshi Tanwar) holds up a baby to Phogat, you can see the trepidation in her eyes, the dismay in his face. These are the most poignant moments of the film and you wish Tewari had built upon those scenes, told us a bit more about the realities of the hinterlands of Haryana, a state which has the poorest sex ratio in the country. But we get none of that.

One fine day, a disillusioned Phogat is confronted with complaints against his daughters. Two black-eyed boys in tattered clothes stand in front of him. They had made the mistake of calling the Phogat sisters names. Mahavir's eyes light up because he realises his choriyas are no less than choras.

A father wakes up to his daughters and finally looks at them. He decides that he will groom them to be wrestlers. The decision is so spontaneous, so devoid of log-kya-kahenge hesitations, that you decide to embrace it wholeheartedly.

Tewari decides to gloss over the kind of backlash the Phogat family must have encountered through a series of pre-emptive scenes coolly nipping any worries in the bud. So guys lech at the Phogat sisters in shorts, but it's not as vulgar as what most women face. An elderly woman also rebukes Phogat's wife for letting her husband do all this: "Beta diya hota toh aisa nahi karta!" (Had you given him a son, he wouldn't have indulged in all this madness).

Somewhere in this story there is true grit " the scenes of a young Geeta Phogat taking on male pehelwans across Haryana are meticulously choreographed. But director Nitesh Tewari, ever so often, plays to the gallery. He keeps reminding us that this is an Aamir Khan film, at moments which should have been just about the sisters.

Even the adrenaline pumping wrestling scenes, which are duly explained to the uninitiated audience, end up being flat after a point of time. Why should we care about the dav-pech (wrestling movements) in the ring, when we know that the real match is being played in Phogat's mind?

Yes, Aamir Khan towers over the film, with his much-talked about bulk, like a monument of credibility. He niftily switches between big crowd pleasing moments: like bossing around puny wrestling officials, telling his girls to toughen up or taking on a caricature of a wrestling coach to quiet scenes with his wife (an extremely likable Sakshi Tanwar). He is the life and soul of Dangal. But he is also Aamir Khan, whose pitch-perfect Haryanvi twang slips off like an errant towel ever so often, leaving you shamefaced.

Which leaves us with the women characters, Geeta (Fatima Sana Sheikh) and Babita (Sanya Malhotra), who actually make the story seem more real. They leave you hoping that maybe there is another rich and complex story to be told about the Phogat sisters.