Mary Kom (5 Sep 2014)

Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Darshan Kumaar, Sunil Thapa, Zachary Coffin

Director: Omung Kumar   Music: Rohit Kulkarni (Background), Shashi, Shivam

Writer: Saiwyn Qadras (Story & Screenplay), Ramendra Vashishth & Karan Singh Rathore (Dialogue)

Running Time: 122 minutes

The movie ‘Mary Kom’ is the biopic of Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom, aka Mary Kom, the five time World Amateur Boxing champion from Manipur, India. Barring this, she is also the proud winner of various Asian and other championships, as well as civilian accolades. The prestigious ‘Padma Bhushan’ (2013) award by Govt. of India is the latest feather in her cap.

The aforesaid gender, sport, as well as the state, sadly don’t enjoy enough prominence in our country. So, its obvious that during her struggling years, Mary Kom must have highly lacked the required infrastructure and support (both moral and financial). Her success story must have been a far cry from those sports personalities whose career were either carefully carved since their early age, or whose normal passion of a particular support, which they were never barred from playing, eventually turned into a career. It is for these reasons, that this amazing sports woman deserves double round of applause. Also, hats off to Omung Kumar for making his directorial debut with such a different and deserving subject.

In the movie, as a child, Mary Kom (Priyanka Chopra) lives with her parents and two kid siblings. She belongs to a very simple Manipur style rural household, sans any luxury, but is blissfully unaware of that. Rather, she chance finds a pair of boxing gloves in a destruction site and keeps it as her prized possession, much to the disdain of her father, who thinks that such a sport will spoil her face, thereby making her unfit for marriage. Even during her adolescence, she is unaware of the emotion ‘fear’ and sans any combat training, doesn’t think twice before entering into a combat with a boy her age. Upon chance meeting with the Manipur state boxing coach (Sunil Thapa), she persuades him to teach her boxing. Initially, the coach ignores her. But finally he discovers one of his best pupils in her and sends in her name for the inter state championship. Thereby, one victory leads to the other, and Mary Kom embarks on her victorious journey, conquering Asian championships as well as World championships in the process!

But this is easier said than done. In an almost non existing infrastructure, she is required to work ridiculously hard on a body that can throw as well as bear international quality punches. And she is required to train for boxing, alongside being a regular daughter and/or wife which includes the regular plethora of cooking, cleaning, laundry etc. She faces opposition and irk of her father, for practicing a non woman type sport. At times, just because the opposing contestant belongs to a much more prominent state, she faces injustice in tournaments. And upon voicing protest, she is subjected to boycott, bad will and humiliation! The three facts that keep her going are – guidance and sheer expectation of her coach, unconditional love and support of her friend turned husband Onler Kom (Darshan Kumaar), and her personal grit and determination to simply win for India. When most career women, especially sports women willingly/unwillingly put an end to their career after marriage and motherhood, Mary Kom goes ahead and does the unthinkable. She gets married, gives birth to twin baby boys, faces emotional turmoil, re-trains herself and wins more championships! The biopic ends here. But the real Mary Kom, has since given birth to another baby boy and harbors the dream of bringing more medals for India!

Priyanka Chopra proved her acting excellence with ‘Barfi’. But with ‘Mary Com’, she has entered a different league altogether. In fact her passionate and unassuming style of acting will remind you of Leonardo DiCaprio! For this movie, the actress has simply given in her body, mind and soul. She plays the age range of a school girl to a mother with elan. She also lives through the profiles of being a boxing student to a boxing champion with flying colors. The actress recently suffered the demise of her dear father. It seems that life without him, in itself was a strugglefor her, and that sense of struggle and anguish was portrayed in her training and boxing scenes. You feel like, she trains to contest, and she contests to win, and that is the only way she can proceed with living! Very few actresses will go through such difficult role that requires no make-up and athletic level of physical labor. Rest of the cast is good as well.

The movie is well paced and it well depicts the tale of a simple Manipur girl, who loves boxing, dreams of consistently winning for India and finally gives shape to her dream. What is noteworthy here is that, apart from simply winning, she doesn’t attach any other gain, clout or mammoth change of lifestyle with her victories. She is well tuned in her family life, family chores and surroundings. It is an inspirational movie with deserving subject, world class acting by the protagonist, good screenplay and direction. Silent trusting bond enjoyed between the protagonist and her coach is something to watch out for. The movie also slightly touches the subject of poor nutrition, improper infrastructure and above all not enough respect meated out to sports women/men during their sports tours. With every sports based movie, hinting at this scenario, may be the sports federation will soon do the needful, and thereby enable winning of more medals by Indian sports personnels.