Ok picture me with Brian Adam's summer of 69 blaring in my car as I drive negotiating Baroda traffic with rain pelting down, all dressed up in a sari - bindi, shindi, churries and all....like a female version of Mad Max out on the town........
OK I understand....it must come through as either quite mad or totally sad....! However even sadder than my nostalgic music taste combined with my masala bling dressing up was the three hour ordeal of watching Bhag Milka Singh Bhag! Alright I am not trying to change my profession to become a movie critic though it is quite tempting when I see Anupama Chopra with all the holly wood hotties that I would die to chuck under their stubbly chins, but honestly I just cannot keep a lid on this streeeeetccccchhhhheeed out movie ....!
At the outset I will say that I was really delighted that our Flying Sikh's story is being immortalised in celluloid, and I was absolutely wowed by Farhan Akhtar's commitment to get his body into the genuineness of shape of an athletes.....kudos to that....
The real star of the film was the little boy who plays the young Milka Singh. What a brilliant portal with such confidence and utter credibility. The best scene of all the end when Milka Singh takes the lap of victory and his younger self runs along side him. The young boys face radiates such a light and poetry that it takes your breath away.
But now comes the "why for" section.....
The narrative had all the potential of being a brilliantly compelling story if only the script writer had been of the standard to comprehend what nuanced story telling requires. You were held to a boring literalness of fact and incidents that left no scope for the understated as everything was over elaborated and long drown out, setting your teeth on edge. Three hours....what on earth were the makers of this film thinking of in subjecting viewers to this ordeal.
And who cast missy Sonan Kapoor? She was just TERRIBLE. Caked with make-up and with a costume designer who apparently did not do any research of consequence, she became a source of irritation every time she appeared on the screen with her one dimensional acting. Farhan who is normally an actor I enjoy watching somehow fell terribly short in this film, making the "punjabi" character more a popular type-cast image of what sardars are perceived to be. Also the insistence to play back the horrors of partition in the manner of repeated flash backs to the same incident did little to serve the film with poignancy that such facts of history hold.
I continued through out the film to feel as though the script writer and the director feared terribly that we would miss the point of the film, and therefore like in a class room with toddlers I was being inflicted upon the insistence to be emphatically told something till it got drilled into my head! No doubt the gentleman upon whom the film was being made must have had countless anecdotes and personal stories to recount....but film making must employ techniques that do beyond merely stringing a life-story together ......
If you've had a fight with someone and need to cool down for a few hours then do go and watch this film......otherwise give it a miss.
On the other hand Kai po che which I watched on DVD at home yesterday is a very well structured film and a must watch. So if you've missed it like I did when it was just released and in the cinemas, I urge you to buy a DVD and tuck your feet up for some great acting. Once again the young actor who plays the part of Ali the budding cricketer was superb....
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