Chak De India

After Cheeni Kum and Bheja Fry, Chak De India is the third film I have enjoyed this year. The euphoria that Chak De India has generated reminds me of the same reaction that Black induced from people, even though it was blatantly similar to the Miracle Worker. A few months later many of those who loved Black sang a different tune for now they found Ms. Mukherjee's Chaplinesque walk rather funny and Mr. Bachchan too loud and over the top.

The city-bred sensibilities of the director may have worked against him and didn't allow the film to scratch beneath the surface. The film relies heavily (at times rather too heavily) on stereotypes. Now there is nothing wrong with stereotyping for (a) it saves screen time, (b) it delivers the point and (c) it helps you get out of sticky situations. Having said that am I to believe that Jharkhand is the new catchword for Jungle? Jaideep Sahni who furnished the script and the lyrics has been associated with very interesting films in the past (Khosla Ka Ghosla and Bunty Aur Babli) but this time around falls short.

The film is supposed to be about a bunch of girls who fight all odds and fulfill their dream(s) and about a coach who redeems his past failure as a player. I'm OK with Hockey not getting the center stage but even the personal track of the girls is just fleetingly touched. The cricketer boyfriend is so stereotypical that he could have been left out; the husband of the goalkeeper has two scenes and it looks like the actor (Nakul Vaid) sleepwalked through his lines. The other players have great intro scenes and some masala to enjoy in the middle but the last twenty minutes of the film just wraps up everything with so much of candy floss that it looks like a big cover-up operation.

Using hockey as a metaphor is a nothing but a smart tactic on the part of the people behind the film; cricket’s been done to death and kabadi won’t look as neat! We don't get to know anything about the game; the coach, who seems to be like a father figure, trains everyone the same way and those who don't love him can take the bench. The tactics discussed in the film sound more like basketball than hockey just like Iqbal made cricket look like baseball. Maybe it has some thing to do with the directors who stayed in America for a long time. The officials in the film are straight out of some 1980’s film which is OK for the do reflect the larger gentry’s take on women in sports but wouldn’t it make for greater drama if officials were kind of based on the real culprits? Imagine someone like KPS Gill sitting larger than life in front of SRK.

The manner in which the girls are introduced- all at the same place and in the same style. All of them seem like misfits in the blue print of life. Why? Why couldn’t one of the girls be a ‘normal ’ person who is not being subjected to torture by family or society at large? Only the Chandigarh babe is shown like that but is it that you can only enjoy what you do if you are capable of faking it as a supermodel!? The question is if I liked Chak De India and enjoyed it and am considering watching it a second time around- why the hell am I pissing and moaning so much? Well for one I think it's an opportunity wasted. Shimit Amin's comes across as a smart filmmaker but Ab Tak Chappan still seems like a better story. Chak De India for me is more of a casting success and packaging success than anything else. The casting of the girls is bang on and one just has to see them in action to believe that. The casting director happens to be a classmate of mine with whom I lost touch almost nine years ago; way to go Abhimanyu Ray.

Image Courtesy: India FM