Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Sonam Kapoor, Pawan
Malhotra, Divya Dutta, Rebecca Breeds, Meesha Shafi, Yograj Singh, K.K. Raina,
Prakash Raj, Art Malik
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash
Mehra
A very well made
movie by an ace director and a wonderful actor featuring the life of an ace
Indian runner and Olympian Milkha Singh, ‘The Flying Sikh’. Rakeysh has managed
to show the athlete’s childhood, upbringing, stints with love, struggle, training,
losses and victories (both in sports and conquering the dark corner in the
heart) beautifully without making it cumbersome and boring. The movie
constantly shuffles between past, further past and present, but due to smart
editing and direction, the final impact is not confusing but good. In fact, ‘Bhaag
Milkha Bhaag’ is one of the best edited Indian film in spite of its duration of
3 hours and 9 minutes!
Any movie that covers
the partition era is bound to have scenes entailing – mass massacre, bloodshed,
loss of loved ones, children turning orphan, fear and trauma amongst civilians,
violation of women etc. And for this very reason, many of us like to distance
ourselves from such movies as it is very disturbing to watch such depictions
again and again. All brownie points should be awarded to the makers of the
movie to show it all, but in bits and pieces and with such adaptations that as
an audience you tend to get the right message without cringing in your seat!
Dark corners created
in our hearts during childhood are the most difficult ones to bear and cure and
they haunt us throughout our lives effecting our participation and success in
one or the other way. Curing such a devious dark corner is the focal point of
this movie and it has been executed very effectively.
Hats off to Farhan
Akhtar for pulling off such a difficult role i.e. a role that demanded the
physicality of an ace athlete and expressions of a rustic north westerner who is
not well educated, has seen the trauma and pain of partition of India and
Pakistan and still has managed to transform himself into a gold medalist in
spite of various barriers thrown in his way. It is difficult to imagine that Farhan
is the same man who started his film career by directing the quintessential metro
guy flick ‘Dil Chahta Hai’. It goes without saying that this lad has grown
miles and bounds as an actor as well as a person.
Actingwise, apart
from Farhan, Divya Dutta and Pawan Malhotra have done very good job. Divya has
simply stood out as the selfless motherly sister who simply adores her kid
brother ‘Milkha’ and silently bears the struggles and exploitations of life
suffered by the women of that era who had to bear the losses of partition as
well as boisterous (read domestic violence) nature of their husbands. Pawan has
also stood out as the loving and inspiring army officer who had a great hand in
the making of ‘Milkha’. He is very natural in emoting the expressions of
judgement, pain, pride, kindness, victory etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment