Couple of reviews..
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http://desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/2007/08/11/review-chak-de-india/GOAL MINER
Shah Rukh Khan plays a women’s team coach in an entertaining, if not entirely satisfying hockey saga.
by Baradwaj Rangan
AUG 12, 2007 - I’M NOT SURE this is entirely intentional, but the first time Kabir Khan (played by that other Khan, Shah Rukh) steps into a hockey stadium and strolls through its expanse, we note that the plastic bucket-seats are a shade of orange, that the walls are painted white, and that there’s nothing but the green of the playing field beyond – and this image beautifully sets up the crux of Shimit Amin’s Chak De India, which is about the national sport meeting the national spirit. Kabir is a former hockey player who takes on the only-in-the-movies task of making World Championship winners (in a mere three months) out of a disparate bunch of “chakla-belan chalaane wali Bharatiya nariyan.” (Desi homemakers: that’s how Anjan Shrivastava, hamming it up as the oily sports authority who’s the mandatory villain-figure, dismisses the women making up the team.)
Chak De India is ostensibly the story of real-life Indian goalie Mir Ranjan Negi, but we’ve seen these events unfold so many times on screen that the film slots itself instantly as A League of Their Own meets Prakash Jha’s Hip Hip Hurray. This is a similarly – and expertly – well-oiled compilation of sporting clichés that, on paper, make you groan but never fail to get you each time on screen: the underdog aiming for the million-to-one shot at glory, the team being a microcosm of India (with each player from a different state), the rebel who comes around in the end for the common cause, the infighting, the outsize egos, and, perhaps the biggest cliché of them all, the washed-up coach seeking redemption. But the way the latter comes through is anything but cliché. As was the case with the mopey loser he played in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, Kabir Khan is another gutsy character choice for our biggest star, and what’s gutsier is the way he appears to have surrendered to the director’s vision of this character.
Amitabh Bachchan played a character with a similar arc – a once-successful man who goes underground after being disgraced, only to return and redeem himself as some sort of savior – in Kaala Paththar (Yash Chopra’s underrated retooling of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim), but where Amitabh roiled with angst, Shah Rukh approaches his destiny with almost Zen calm. There’s, of course, that trademark shot of Shah Rukh’s – the one where a close-up reveals a face almost entirely immobile save for the region around the mouth, the ever-so-slight tremors around the thinly-pursed lips suggesting that the actor forgot to spit out the gum he was chewing before the director yelled “Action!” But otherwise, this is a remarkably restrained performance.
He rarely raises his voice except on the odd occasion where he breaks up a catfight between the girls, and even his rah-rah, pre-match inspiration speeches come across as extraordinarily rehearsed; his measured tones make it appear that he isn’t addressing a group of would-be giant killers so much as a bunch of little old ladies bent over their embroidery. Another movie – one that went for easy melodrama (not that there’s anything wrong with easy melodrama) – may have had him break down before his team about his infamy, an incident that would have spurred them to avenge their father-figure, but all Kabir does here is spur them to play for their country, and for each other. This is a film about team spirit in its truest sense.
But as wonderful it is to see the biggest name in our cinema today sharing equal time with a group of no-names – and as wonderful as Shah Rukh is – this performance (rather, the conception of this character) throws the movie off a bit. Chak De India can’t resist giving its hero a back story, but it’s also extremely coy about filling us in on this back story. I loved that the years Kabir Khan spent in self-imposed exile, after being disgraced, are a mystery to us. Late in the film, we see him fingering the silver medal he won after his flub cost his team the gold, and it’s not easy to read him. It’s a private moment that stays private; only he knows why he chose to come back as the coach of the flailing women’s team, that too after seven long – and surely agonising – years away from the game.
But is Chak De India really the kind of film where we want unspoken internal monologues? Somewhere along the line, I began to get the feeling that this is one time Shah Rukh really needed to have played to the gallery – for almost everyone else plays the broadest of caricatures, and the narrative itself is the broadest of contrivances. Scene for scene, I could sense the director trying to break away from filmmaking cliché – and yet, his story, his very format is a giant cliché. What is Javed Khan’s part if not an updated version of the benevolent Ramu kaka that was once AK Hangal’s stock-in-trade? What is it if not a lazy stereotype that the actress who plays the Punjabi team member has the kind of build that instantly qualifies her as a potential lead in a Hunterwali remake? What is it if not an easy potshot that a player’s cricket-star fiancé is a chauvinistic boor who all-too-expectedly sneers at her hockey-star aspirations? And what is it if not pathetic-fallacy melodrama that a key moment of conflict – okay, internal conflict – occurs during a major downpour, the skies weeping for our hero’s plight?
Kabir Khan seems to belong in a different movie than one containing these beloved elements of our popular cinema, one whose eardrum-busting background score all but holds up cue cards about the emotions you’re meant to register at any point. And yet, there’s no denying that part of the attraction of Chak De India is watching it flip-flop between what it could have easily been (a flat-out pump-your-fist-in-the-air sporting flick) and what it strives nobly to be (a more grounded, more textured pump-your-fist-in-the-air sporting flick) – and even outside the handful of beautifully conceived sequences (like the one where the coach deftly deflects a sexual proposition from one of his girls), the film is never less than watchable.
One reason is surely the foolproof-ness of the rooting-for-the-underdog-team genre, the underdog nature of this team emphasised brilliantly by a group of non-actors. (The standouts for me were Chitrashi Rawat, the pint-sized small-town girl with a huge chip on her shoulder about big-city méms, and Shilpa Shukla, as the team’s rebel without a cause.) But more importantly, there are slivers of reality amid all the sporting fantasy, touching reminders that we may be watching a fairy tale but one that’s set in our own backyard. A lot of heads in the southern part of our country will be nodding at the scene where a Telugu-speaker goes to register for training camp and she’s referred to as a Tamil. “Tamil aur Telugu mein kitna faraq hai?” the man at the desk mumbles, not as a question so much as a rhetorical statement. The girl doesn’t take affront; she merely replies, with the not-again weariness probably identifiable only by people from below the Vindhyas, “Utna hi, jitna Punjabi aur Bihari mein hai.”
Copyright ©2007 The New Sunday Express
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SRK and the M word
Saisuresh Sivaswamy
August 13, 2007
I should have taken on colleagues who said Chak De! India will flop. But alas, I happened to share Shah Rukh Khan's [Images] pre-release prediction that while it will be a good film, it won't be a commercial hit, and let the bet pass.
In hindsight, after watching -- and being swept away by -- the amazingly simple, yet amazingly inspirational film, I cannot stop raving about it. I thought Swades [Images] would be SRK's [Images] finest effort ever; but Chak De shows that the actor in him -- when not subsumed by his superstar status -- has a vast reservoir of emoting left to satisfy fans and critics alike for many more years.
Chak De's appeal among the audiences shows that even sans commercial considerations like song and dance, the mandatory fights, there is a vast market for a straight-forward, well-narrated tale. We have always known it from the multiplex hits like Bheja Fry etc; now we know such a market exists for stars and superstars as well. No one need remains a prisoner of their image.
Chak De is the tale of a disgraced hockey captain, Kabir Khan, and his attempt at redemption, reclaiming his honour by leading the unsung women's hockey team to world cup triumph. Yes, it is thus a story about gender equality -- a point that gets hammered many times through the narrative with dialogues like 'Tumlog belan chalanewali kidhar skirt pahinkar hockey stick leti ho?'
But to me, the film came across, and appealed, not for the blow it strikes for the country's most neglected sport nor for the fact that it shows that women are no less than men in any sphere they choose.
The film warmed to me because this was the first time the M-word has come to be at the centre of the superstar's oeuvre.
For throughout his illustrious career spanning two decades, Shah Rukh Khan has never played a Muslim character -- if you ignore that cameo in Kamal Haasan's [Images] Hey! Ram. Even in Chak De, there is NO allowance to the character's faith barring the name, Kabir Khan, the scraggly beard he sports, and the aadab with which he greets others. Not once is Kabir Khan shown doing the namaaz, not once is he shown clad in anything but 'Western attire', not once does he ever say he is a Muslim.
A still from Chak De! IndiaBut, much as the script overtly downplays any mention of Kabir Khan's faith, it is Khan's dilemma as a Muslim in today's India that courses through the narrative.
And that's the way Shah Rukh would have wanted it, I am sure. Unlike the other two Khans who share the mantle with him.
I have no idea if Salman Khan [Images] has played a Muslim in his films, and if he has, what kind of Muslim the character was. Aamir Khan [Images], given his nod towards realism, portrayed one that remains etched in my mind, Rehaan of Fanaa [Images]. Rehaan was a Kashmiri terrorist, clearly showing that Aamir will not duck any uncomfortable issue when it comes to his cinema. Rehaan fascinates me no end, since it was played by the same actor who also played ACP Rathore in the memorable Sarfarosh, the film that head-on tackled Pakistani terrorism in India.
Since then, I have been puzzling over the kind of Muslim Shah Rukh Khan will ever play, and the kind of film it will be. I got my answer with Chak De.
Shah Rukh has, in the past, spoken about his views on Islam, including to us, and they are reflective of the kind of person he is: Easy-going, and married to a Hindu. He is also extremely careful of the kind of roles he plays, and this extreme discretion is the reason -- I think -- that it has taken him this long to play a Muslim.
It cannot be easy to be a Muslim, in India and especially in these times. The moderate Muslim, who is in an overwhelming majority I am certain, has to constantly fight two demons: One from the past, of Partition and his/her perspective on Pakistan, a Muslim-majority nation inimical to India; and another ghost from the present, when Muslims are usually accused of engineering terrorist plots in India. Their silence often is reflective of the silence of the majority, of which we all are guilty of, but the silence of the Muslim is the one that is constantly highlighted.
A still from Chak De! IndiaI am sure SRK himself has had to face this dilemma, this doubt over his commitment to India. And it comes out in a searing line in the movie: 'Aise log Partition ke time mein hi Pakistan jaana chahiye tha.' It is a line, a charge, that must trouble SRK no end, as it does no doubt to millions of other Indians, for it returns to haunt him during the movie.
In my mind, the central theme running through the movie was: Can a Muslim be a Muslim and be loyal to India? Or to modify that, What must a Muslim do in the face of doubts over his loyalty to India?
It's a pressing question, for as SRK stops short of saying in another place, there is no second chance given to Muslims. When his friend, after pitching for SRK as the coach of the national women's team, consoles SRK's past failure by saying everyone is allowed one mistake, Humsab ki ek ghalati maaf, Shah Rukh Khan disagrees wryly: Sabki nahi, sabki nahi.
He doesn't use the M word here, or in any other place, but the message is very clear. There is no second chance to the Indian Muslim if he fumbles. As he repeats it towards the end, the burden of failure is too much to carry, most don't have it in them to survive.
But Kabir Khan has it in him. Falling off the radar for seven years, he resurfaces to reclaim his honour, restoring the public's faith in his nationalism. All the while training the young girls he only harps on one theme: India, nation, the tricolour. Submerge your regional identities, he exhorts them, play as Indians, be Indian, you are not from Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Manipur, Jharkhand... And, though he doesn't say it, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Sikh. And when you play as an Indian, not only is the acclamation sure to follow, but it also wipes out any lingering doubts over your love for your country.
In the public domain, Kabir Khan worships the tricolour, breathes for India. We don't know what he does behind the doors of his home, which he so eloquently shuts on us in the last scene. The message is clear: Whatever I am in my home, when I step out, I do so as a proud Indian.
For someone like me searching for the kind of Muslim SRK will play, and I daresay the kind of Muslim SRK is, Kabir Khan is the answer. For Muslims caught in the pincer between extremism and majority scepticism, Kabir Khan provides the answer. For the others, Chak De provides some great moments.
http://inhome.rediff.com/movies/2007/aug/13sai.htm
AuthorTopic: Chak De! India.. (Read 2770 times)
August 13, 2007, 07:55:35 PM