Chak De India- Reviews (Pg 32)B-O(42) - Page 52

Chak De which India

Jaideep Sahni

What does the most talked about film recently tell us about our country? The film's writer explains

It's been the third week for Chak De India and, to put it mildly, the film is doing much better than what many people expected. There are many things all of us in the team that made the film are thrilled about, but what has given us the most encouragement is the response of the people to the kind of patriotism the film attempts to stand for.

There was a time, post-Independence, when we were perhaps smarting from being ruled for so long by foreigners, and there was perhaps a tendency to feel better about ourselves by being slightly unkind to foreigners in our references, especially in our films. So you would see a bird shitting on a bald foreigner's head arising from a hope in the filmmakers' hearts that the audience would derive some kind of vicarious pleasure. There were references to how our civilisation gave the world everything that was good in it, and perhaps they did reflect the popular feeling in the newly independent nation.

But that was then. Over the last decade or so, as the country and the economy have opened to the world, the suspicion and awe of the foreigner has been replaced by a confidence, not always quiet, and sometimes bordering on a techno-cricket-film chauvinism. And as we went about making a film celebrating India's women athletes, we were faced with some decisions about the kind of patriotism we would reflect.

On the one hand was the almost blind love for the flag among the athletes who were our inspiration, and we had to stay true to them. On the other was our own hesitation to seem like we were guilty of wrapping our story in the flag, which may be the conventional wisdom in the industry, but which makes our stomachs churn. For us their story was a story of people daring to dream, and going flat out to achieve it in the face of all kinds of odds which athletes from developed nations have never even heard of.

And we made our choices. We chose not to falsely glorify everything about India. We chose not to skirt the issues of gender, religion, region and language biases but take them on, because we thought that was patriotic. We chose not to conveniently edit out the inconvenient truths, hiding behind national team's thrust forward as examples of perfectly channelised nationalism by sports administrators. We chose to display our admiration for incredible people in unfashionable clothes, many belonging to parts of India which the shining new India doesn't have much time for. We chose to give utmost respect to the foreign teams and coaches our team played against, and not portray them as devils incarnate out to destroy our 5000-year-old civilisation.

We chose to treat athletes like athletes, irrespective of the fact whether they were Indian or foreign, women or men, winners or losers. And we did all of this not because we thought we were some great messiahs who would redefine either films or nationalism, but as storytellers telling a story the only way we understood it — with the sensibilities that made sense to our hearts and minds. We tried to neither use chauvinistic patriotism to push our characters for commerce, nor sweep the genuine patriotism of national athletes under a carpet of chic modernity.

And today, even in the third week, the audiences are rewarding us, scene after scene, in theatres all over India.

What does this show? To us it appears to show the same thing that general elections in this country have shown, decade after decade. That the Indian people are by and large reasonable, like to live with each other, and believe in a patriotism that is not violent, chauvinistic and stupid. And they are perfectly happy to look within themselves, warts and all, and still be proud of what they need to be proud of. They don't need films, politicians or supposed external enemies to feel more Indian. There is a time honoured name for this kind of patriotism — it's called the spirit of sportsmanship.

And there is another thing we learnt while researching for the film. As we spent more and more time with the sportspeople — players and coaches — we began realising that sport may probably be the most powerful way to build character in the young and teach new generations about honest ways to achieve recognition. It kept coming to us while writing and making the film but we were worried that it may sound like a lecture. So we didn't talk about it directly, but we hoped that it would kind of lurk somewhere in the sub-text and touch viewers subconsciously — even magically.

I was trained to be a computer engineer and am a great believer in the power of information technology to bring in positive change in developing societies. But in the course of researching for this film it dawned upon me that in the race to produce the engineers, doctors and managers so necessary for a developing nation, we have ended up completely ignoring sports and arts in our resource allocation — and we may end up a nation of selfish techno-yuppies with very little character development, a distaste for teamwork and a weird understanding of what this nation is, what its needs are, and where we and our personal quest for success, recognition and achievement can fit into all this. Maybe this is too simplistic an assumption. But then again, it may not be. And in that case, the cost of not addressing it right now may be somewhat more than what it takes to make a film.

Sahni is screenwriter and lyricist of 'Chak De India'. He has previously written scripts for films like 'Company', 'Bunty aur Babli' and 'Khosla ka Ghosla'

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/213720.html

A HEAD for tales

Devyani Onial

It's a late Sunday evening at Juhu beach. Families spill out on every bit of the sandy stretch and across the water, Mumbai lights up slowly, building by building. "You know, this is a great place to pick up dialogue. Stand around the coconut guy, the sevpuri stalls on the beach and you'll hear some great stuff. I used some lines for one or two characters in Company,'' says Jaideep Sahni, scriptwriter of Chak De India, the sporting drama that the nation can't stop talking of.

For Chak De , for which he also wrote the dialogues and lyrics, Sahni kept a different kind of company—he hung out at national hockey training camps pretending to be a student writing a thesis on the game. Back from Los Angeles where the film was screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Sahni is jetlagged and a bit taken aback by the success; but he's still immersed in the story of the spunky women's hockey team. He dials the number of Haryana hockey player Mamta Kharab, who was the take-off point for the film's most lovable character, Komal Chautala, and grins in delight. "She has set Chak de as her caller tune," he says.
From Lucknow to LA, players have identified with the film. "At the LA premiere, I saw an old lady trying to catch my attention. I went up to her. She was crying and asked me, 'How did you know about my life and about the things we said in the hostel? Thank you for giving back my life'." That woman was Otilia Mascarenhas, a surgeon now and Goa's first woman Arjuna award winner, who captained the Indian women's hockey team in Auckland in the 1971 World Cup.

This young writer is a chronicler of the real. Much of Sahni's writings, from Company to Bunty Aur Babli, Khosla Ka Ghosla to Chak De, captures a changing India and its different modes of being. A single-column article in the sports pages of a newspaper on the win of the women's hockey team in the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester may have set him off on the Chak De trail but it's not just the neglect of hockey that he takes up. Chak De is as much about hockey as it is about being a Muslim in India, about young spirits smashing the gender divide. Last year's hit Khosla Ka Ghosla took up the urban middle-class dream of owning a plot of land and the nightmare of losing it. Bunty Aur Babli was about small-town India, impatient to get ahead.

On this slim body of work rests his reputation as Bollywood's next big writer. In his mid-30s, Sahni is seen to be part of the new breed of scriptwriters, which includes Vishal Bhardwaj and Rajkumar Hirani, that has got good writing back in films. "In a short span, he has done films that are poles apart. That shows his range as a writer," says noted writer-lyricist Javed Akhtar. That also shows, adds Akhtar, that Sahni's canvas is not being influenced by the success of his films. "It's easy to repeat yourself if your last film was a success. But he didn't do another Bunty Aur Babli." Some would say the variety that Sahni has brought in is a part of a growing willingness in the industry to explore new themes. Akhtar agrees. "The kind of films we are making now is something we weren't doing earlier. I consider the period between 1983 and 1993 as the darkest for Indian films. Now there is a greater desire to do original films though it'll take some time to reach the maturity of the golden era, the sort that Bimal Roy and Mehboob achieved," says Akhtar.

Sahni appears to have begun on that journey at least. ''I see writing as the R&D arm of filmmaking,'' he says. And he hasn't scrimped on research. For Bunty Aur Babli, for example, Sahni drew on his experience as an IT consultant—in his first job at NIIT in Delhi that lasted one year, his territory was western UP—to create the sleepy Fursatganj. ''Everywhere you go now, everyone watches 300-odd channels. So their aspirations are bound to be the same. The film was a bridge between Shining India and an India waiting to shine,'' says Sahni.

How did this former adman with the IT-consultant look find his way into Bollywood? After six ''very good years'' in ad firm Contract in Delhi, he felt ''meetings and the regular stuff'' were restricting his self-expression. He decided to quit in filmi style — in his resignation letter, he complained …''do takiya di naukri mein mera lakhon ka sawan jaye," a snatch from a song of the 1970s film Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan—and work independently. In the late 90s, he chanced upon John Briley's screenplay of Gandhi in a Delhi bookshop. ''I was hooked. I read it and thought: it's almost like a computer programme. Now I know it's much more difficult.'' He began teaching himself the art of scriptwriting. "I would access sites of universities abroad that ran scriptwriting courses and tried reading up whatever I could on the Internet,'' says Sahni. Around this time Ram Gopal Varma was looking for a writer for Jungle and someone recommended Sahni's name. Varma let him give it a shot.

Since then, Sahni has been working on diverse subjects, drawing on his experience and interpreting the world around him. For Chak De, he was at hockey camps across the country, talking to players and picking up nuggets of their lives. In the end, he had a fat file on the game. ''I thought if the players and coach knew that I was researching for a film, it might alter their behaviour. But I revealed the truth to a few of them on the last day.''

Delhi was where Sahni was born and grew up. With a civil servant father and a teacher mother, books, and not films, made up the world of his childhood. Holidays for Sahni, who studied in Delhi at the Kendriya Vidyalaya on IIT campus till his Class X and then at DPS RK Puram, meant reading. ''I was never into films. I used to find ads more entertaining. My brother and I would tape Chitrahaars and ads. When I came to Mumbai to write, I must have seen only 30-odd films,'' says Sahni.

From his Delhi experience and a family incident grew the story of last year's surprise hit: Khosla Ka Ghosla. The story of a middle-class family who invests everything in a plot in south Delhi only to lose it to the land mafia and how it wins it back had a life-next-door feel to it that recalled the best of Sai Paranjape's work in the 80s. (Sahni counts Paranjape's Chashme Buddoor and Katha among the films that had a major influence on him.) ''The plot was taken from what happened to my aunt. The bits about the mafia building a wall around their plot and the Khosla family hiring pehalwans to evict them were true. But the latter part about how they win their plot back was all fantasy. In real life, it didn't end well,'' says Sahni, who wrote the lyrics and also turned creative producer for the film. The authenticity was once again the result of research—Sahni sent out his team to meet and secretly record conversations with property dealers in Gurgaon.

Moments of his life keep cropping up in his work. As a student of computer engineering at Bidar in Karnataka, for example, Sahni witnessed the horrific anti-Sikh riots of 1988. Six students were killed in the attack and the house where Sahni lived with fellow students was the first to be burnt down. "Nobody helped us. Another student and I had to go to Hyderabad to appeal to the CRPF for help.'' The lesson he learnt—what it is to belong to a minority community and how everyone is a minority somewhere—gave life to the character of coach Kabir Khan in Chak De.

Writing lyrics is Sahni's stress-buster. Scripts are a more complex business.

''It's usually the subject that catches my attention. Then come the characters, then a kind of a story idea starts forming, the character's journey. And from then on it's the craft stuff—screenplay, dialogues, lyrics, all of it,'' he says.

Does writing come easy to him? For years now, he says, he has been trying unsuccessfully to get up early to write. ''I keep wasting time, surfing the Net, reading newspapers and usually start getting terribly guilty by around lunchtime. So I have a guilty lunch and guiltily watch TV and then by 3 or so in the afternoon I get going and write for as many hours as it comes naturally and organically.''

The road ahead holds a lot of promise. Sahni has written the script and lyrics for the Madhuri Dixit comeback film Aaja Nachle, which is ready for a November release. He has penned the lyrics for the Yash Raj-Disney animation film Roadside Romeo that'll be released next year. What he would love to script, however, is a science fiction. ''I would like to write on the guys in ISRO. Or people in the public sector—Bharat Heavy Elecrticals Limited (BHEL), Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES). Everyone thinks of them as people who don't do anything but there are many among them who do,'' says Sahni.

It may be the turn of the public sector underdogs next but the present clearly belongs to their sporting counterparts. "I have 270 new congratulatory messages in my mail inbox and I am going to forward all of them to the players of the 2002 Commonwealth team—Suman Bala, Helen Mary, Mamta Kharab. They are for them actually."

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/213885.html

I wanted a solo heroine role:Sagarika

As a normal newcomer who's always wanted to be an actress, even I wanted a solo heroine role.

When Sagarika Ghatge went to audition for the role of Preeti Sabharwal, the 'mem' of Chak De India, the pretty girl was taken aback when she got to know that there will be 15 other girls in the film with her.

"As a normal newcomer who's always wanted to be an actress, even I wanted a solo heroine role. The thought of waiting for something else did come into my mind," she admits.

But today, Sagarika feels grateful that she didn't say no to the role. "When I heard the gist of the story, I was convinced about doing this film. Every girl is so unique and has her own story. Once I got to know the graph of every character, I said yes," she says with a smile.

But nothing had prepared her for the rigorous training session that the group of girls went through for three months. "We used to wake up at 5 every morning and learn hockey, be back home by 2 and then rush to the studios after that. It was quite a task but we enjoyed it thoroughly," she says. But was it easier for her, considering she was a national athlete?

"I was never a national athlete," she clarifies and adds, "I was in a boarding school and there, one tends to play all sorts of games. Apart from volleyball, basketball and others, I have played hockey too and I was pretty decent at it."

The shooting of the film too was a memorable experience for Sagarika and she laughs when you ask her to pick out any one incident that has stayed on in her mind. "Each day was memorable. How can I pick out one?" she asks.

But yes, the one thing that will always remain with her are the memories of Melbourne where all the girls stayed together for almost two months. So were there ever any ego clashes? "When you put 16 girls together, there are bound to be little arguments," she admits but that was also the time, she adds that the girls really got to know each other.

But the question on everyone's mind is, how did she fare with her on-screen rival Komal Chautala played by Chitrashi Rawat? "People don't believe this, but we were the best of friends once the camera was switched off.

In fact, the assistant director used to shout at us and say, 'In dono ko alag karo' because in the next scene, we would be required to fight!" she laughs.

And of course, working with none other than Shah Rukh Khan in her very first film, was something she could have only dreamt of. "He's a phenomenon!" she gushes about her on-screen coach and adds, "Even though he's SRK, he was so approachable.

I remember when we would not be able to get a scene right, he would talk to us separately and explain the scene correctly. He shared his knowledge with us and that's what makes him such a great actor."

While the country is still reeling under the effects of Chak De India, Sagarika is gearing up for some new projects in Bollywood. "There are a few good offers in the pipeline but are yet to be finalised," she says. So till we see you on screen again, Chak De Sagarika!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_Buzz/I_wanted_a_sol o_heroine_roleSagarika/articleshow/2334228.cms

A tale of two films

Sanjay Trehan
Tuesday, September 4, 2007: (New Delhi):

This weekend I checked out two films of differing styles and character. In a way, it was a journey from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Even if I discount the immediate post-viewing mass hysteria, Chak De India is not just a film.

It's a revolution of sorts, hitting at the centuries of obscurantism in traditional Indian society that viewed women, for obvious pecuniary and sexual reasons, as second class beings, existing only to satisfy the whims of the superior and powerful patriarchal class.

So, when SRK, subdued, unshaven, sober and refreshingly restrained, gets down to create a World Cup winning women's Hockey team, he puts a minor but significant foot in the door for women to assert themselves as individuals.

Though it begins as a private battle to redeem himself and regain his lost pride, it ends up breaking a mould, and what a rotten mould it was!

In this, lies the true triumph of the film, besides the obvious winners in terms of a taut script, invigorating cast of actors and a never before seen SRK minus his customary stutter, cultivated drawl and over-the-hill flamboyance.

The film tugs at your heart and makes you want to do something for this much maligned, much abused country, desperately short of heroes and good tidings.

In a subliminal way, Chak De India is very much the story of the underdog that too deserves her moment in the Sun.

On the other hand, RGV Ki Aag is a self-indulgent fantasy unfolding without any logic.

Looks like the film was made when RGV was in a prolonged state of daze and most definitely had ear plugs on. For the soundtrack is so loud and pompous, it is designed to wake up even the dead.

RGV has managed to accomplish an almost impossible feat of making Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgan look trite and wastrels as actors, not a minor achievement by any score.

Urmila's pelvic-in-your-face movements notwithstanding, the film does everything in its power to make your spirits droop to a new low. You begin to get angry at the sheer stupidity of it all.

Was this Sholay revisited? Bull! Even if you don't compare it to the original classic, it's a waste of a film. Things happen because a crazy self-obsessed director willed them to be, with absolute disregard to the intelligence of his audience.

The script is almost non-existent, and whatever little is, is banal, pedestrian and overly pretentious in trying to evoke gutter-like and guttural quality from its lead protagonists.

The film is shot with dark overtones and darker undertones, in the belief that it's the new mantra of gangster flicks, and each character is like a caricature of his or her self, bereft of dignity and conviction, choking on an unreal brooding intensity that seems so whacked out. If it was meant to be a spoof, it falls flat on its glitzy egg-splashed face.

What the hell was RGV thinking? That he would crap a truckload of stars and the audience will lap it up? Loud, pretentious, contrived, it's **** served on a silver platter with a generous dash of stale perfume, which simply doesn't work.

The audience has moved on; RGV needs to move to a rehab.

Check out Chak De India, it will restore your faith in good cinema, and hopefully, in India. And check out RGV Ki Aag only if you lack self-esteem and want to feel sorry for yourself.

http://www.ndtvmovies.com/newstory.asp?section=Movies&id=ENT EN20070024925

Climax over, let the sequel begin

UMPIRE'S POST
Suveen K Sinha / Mumbai September 02, 2007

Success makes money, so players of low-priority sports like football and women's hockey earn much less than their cricketing counterparts.

Chak De! India is a very courageous film. Its central theme is that most ignored of all ignored sports, women's hockey. Protagonist Shahrukh Khan, who after committing a spate of screen murders early on in his career became everyone's favourite lover boy, does not have a female romantic lead against him.

The film manages to capture succinctly how official cynicism and apathy can peg back a game. Yet, Shahrukh does not revolutionise the system like Amitabh's Vijay would have done 30 years ago. Kabir Khan merely slips through it as there is no other contender for the post of the national team's coach.

The film works because it is so believable. It shows how a team can triumph through hard work (the women begin the day with a 10-km run) and by playing as a unit, which is achieved partly by cutting prima donnas down to size and partly by eliminating internal disparities.

There is also, obliquely, a rationale provided for the apathy of officials and others. The team never wins anything. Presumably, if the women's hockey team was in the winning habit, things would have been better for it. The circumstances do change dramatically after the victory at the climax.

What if the climax, the world cup win, had happened at the beginning of the film? One can safely assume that things would have been a lot better for the team, as they would be if there is a sequel to Chak De!.

In winning the Nehru Cup, the national football team has defied five decades of losing history. Curiously, the footballers are not paid any match fee. They would split among themselves the prize money, which will work out to just above Rs 1 lakh for each player for winning the tournament by registering four wins in five matches.

To put things in perspective, the members of the cricket team received Rs 1.6 lakh as fee just for turning up for Thursday's one-day international against England at Old Trafford, which they proceeded to lose from a very strong position. Throw in the Rs 1 crore bonus for winning the Test series, Rs 2.5 lakh fee for each of the three Tests and the Rs 3 lakh tour allowance.

That will make every cricketer richer by nearly Rs 16 lakh for making the trip to England. This is in addition to the retainership money that they get under the contract with the board, which at the highest level can touch Rs 50 lakh.

Money apart, the All India Football Federation has not exactly covered itself in glory in handling the team. With Thursday's victory in football, the climax has been played out. Can the sequel begin?

http://www.business-standard.com/lifeleisure/storypage.php?l eftnm=5&subLeft=7&chklogin=N&autono=296539&tab=r

Chak De! dribbles its way to B-school

4 Sep, 2007, 0052 hrs IST,Aniruddha Ghosh & Ambika Naithani, TNN

MUMBAI: Chak De! India's Kabir Khan is not just a hit at the box office and with critics. The inspirational character and the movie are now subjects of a case study at Mumbai's SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR).

And the reel-life example is not just limited to the obvious issues of team spirit and women's liberation, it's also about turning around a company.

Case studies as a learning tool, pioneered by Harvard Business School, have been a part of Indian B-School curriculum for a while now. While IIMs used movies such as Lagaan as case studies, it's the first time that SP Jain has picked a Hindi movie.

"Selection of movies is crucial, and all the movies showcased during this module are based on real-life situations. For example, this movie encompasses all the human nuances," says SP Jain's head of the assessment and development of managerial and administrative potential (ADMAP) course Dr Narayanan.

"The idea is to provide a rigorous learning experience that is entertaining at the same time. Watching movies and then deliberating on them forms a part of the experimental learning," she adds.

The case studies are a part of the ADMAP programme, which is a core subject in the institute's first-year curriculum. Taking up movies as case studies at SP Jain was the brainchild of SPJIMR's dean, Dr ML Shrikant.

As in any other case study, the students were given a synopsis of the movie and a concept note of what the learning objectives from the movie could be. They were then asked to replace a character with themselves. "Their reactions were gauged during the different phases that the character goes through, the ups and downs and the points of inflexion," says Dr Narayanan.

Suchita Sanghi, one of the first-year students who was part of the exercise, said she identified most with the character of Indian hockey team's captain, Vidya Sharma.

"She was always a team player and pursued her dreams despite the challenges. For me, the lessons to be learnt are that determination and dedication are crucial while working for an organisation," she added.

Various perspectives are expected to be thrown in during the classroom discussion and presentations, as the case had been during the previous movie-case studies. There is, of course, no right or wrong answer in such exercise, but a holistic understanding of the characters and their decision-making processes provides students with valuable perspectives, feels another first-year student of SP Jain Arpit Dhariwal.

Further, the movie has been compared to the real-life case study of a large Indian multinational where 40,000 employees had to be laid off in three years. "Kabir Khan can be seen as a quintessential administrator," says Dr Narayanan, justifying the choice of her movie. The instances of organisations resisting change and misgivings towards the cause of change have been highlighted very well in the movie, she feels.

Though discussing a movie in class sounds like an exciting proposition, it isn't quite as simple, feel students. However, they do admit it's a welcome change from the strenuous schedule of a B-school. It's also a course they feel they gain a lot from.

"Everyone watches movies, but after going through this course, apart from the experiential learning that I picked up, the way I watch movies has changed drastically," admits a second-year student at SP Jain Gaurav Agrawal, who went through the course last year.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET_Features/Corporate_Do ssier/Chak_De_dribbles_its_way_to_B-school/articleshow/23358 26.cms

Chak De India

Verdict: Superhit

Weekly Earnings: India Rs 8.25 crores ; UK $27,280 ; US $ 98,061 Total Earnings: India Rs. 44 crores ; UK $830,030 ; US $ 1,053,099

PB Rating: 8.0 out of 10
Public Rating (by 936 unique users): 7.6
Producer: Aditya Chopra
Director: Shimit Amin
Music: Salim-Sulaiman
Lyrics: Jaideep Sahni
Starring: Shah Rukh Khan, Vidya Malvade, Amanda Wilkinson, Sagarita Ghatge, Sarah O'Conner, Anaitha Nair, Shilpa Shukla, Arya Menon, Shubhi Mehta, Nisha Nair, Sandia Furtado, Kim Snowden, Lalhmingkimi Khiangte, Tanya Abrol, Chitrashi Rawat, Rania Mascarhanas, Nichola Sequeira and Kimberly Miranda

Yash Raj's Shah Rukh Khan-Vidya Malvade starrer, 'Chak De! India', continues to be strong, specially in the cities and with tax-exemptions coming into effect in many states, the movie is set for a long and fruitful run.

The Shimit Amin directed movie has also consolidated its position in the Oversaes and is on verge of being declared a hit their also.

http://www.planetbollywood.com/BoxOffice/index.php

Super strong all over and emerges 2nd blockbuster of the year. The 4th week business is approx 7 crore nett. BLOCKBUSTER

www.boxofficeindia.com

Thanks for all the wonderful articles Sabeena 👏 👏 You are doing a great job 👏 👏

CDI is a lovely film - SRK and his girls rocked all the way 😃

I absolutely LOVED this movie.....its by far the best film of the year. SRK was fantabulous and I loved all teh 16 girls----they were so natural and perfectly cast.

IMO SRK has nvr looked sexier.....i dont see why he has to go build a six pack---he looked yummy in the track suits and the plain white shirts.