‘Mukkabaaz’ — It isn’t a movie as much as it is Activism
The routes taken are boxing and the state of sports in India but the destinations are seriously intense casteism, patriarchy and recent nationalism! Anurag Kashyap — you beauty!
Shravan, played by Vineet Kumar Singh, is the underdog non-Brahmin boxer who wishes to make it big professionally. Bhagwan Das Mishra, played by Jimmy Shergill, is the local Brahmin don, boxing coach & federation chief and living embodiment of everything that’s wrong with India. Shravan falls in love with Mishra’s mute niece, played by debutante Zoya Hussain, but since Mishra hates Shravan, Shravan’s love and career, both are at stake. What happens next forms the rest of the movie.
Kashyap throws in an array of issues that plague our country — mistreatment due to caste, patriarchal ownership of women, the despicable state of sports in India, recent cow-vigilante nationalism, interfering fathers as well as the archetypal underdog-sports-triumph plus love story. Yet while never going over the top, the movie poignantly takes you through the pain of a man who’s undeniably in the right but always bearing the brunt of our Society and people conspiring to deny him his rights.
Based on several stories of skilled athletes who failed to make it big and one particular boxer who was alleged to have failed a dope test, Vineet Kumar Singh co-wrote the script himself and took it to several producers with his only condition being that he would play the lead role à la Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky. All Producers turned it down but Anurag Kashyap is not all producers, he picked it up, added his flavour to the script and insisted Singh turn into a real boxer and not a filmstar who’s play-acting. Singh hence moved to Patiala for over an year, pretending to just be a boxing enthusiast and actually turned into a hardcore boxer. Hence all boxing matches in the film were shot without an action choreographer and against real-life boxers.
Vineet Kumar Singh ceases to exist, he is Shravan. Not only did he physically transform for this movie and actually become a boxer, he was taken to the hospital several times during shooting, once even pretending to be fine after a serious injury out of fear that the film won’t get made. After a 17 year struggle in Bollywood, it is hopefully now his time to shine. Debutante Zoya Hussain emotes only with her eyes and gestures and steals the show. The one scene where Singh and Hussain communicate their yearning for each other only through gestures elicited at least 10 sobs from the 20 people in my cinema hall. You hate Jimmy Shergill with all your vengeance and that is where he triumphs as an actor. That he started his acting career as a Punjabi chocolate boy and has since gotten noticed only for dark, villainous roles is unfortunate but also speaks volumes about his versatility and adaptability. Ravi Kishan brings a restrained, confident performance as the Harijan coach who mentors Shravan after he gets thwarted by Mishra. All other actors in the movie are just like the ones in Kashyap’s other films — solid, realistic, moving. Nawazuddin Siddique too makes a guest appearance to keep up Kashyap’s habit for having a male item-song in all his films.
Kashyap revels in making his audiences uncomfortable, in pushing us to explore dark places we love avoiding. And my heart went out to him imagining how hard and smart he must have had to work to say all he wanted to say about today’s times while ensuring no hue and cry are raised over it. The one scene that absolutely takes the cake is where the perennial victim Singh turns the tables by beating Mishra black and blue and all onlookers stand silent because he chants “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” after each blow. The movie ends with a song with these lyrics: “Bohot hua sammaan, tumhari aisi taisi”. If the Padmaavat brigade had any brains, they would have actually opposed this movie but that they don’t is this movie’s boon because it could hence release but also its bane for that is where lie the problems this movie intends to address.
‘Padmaavat’ has made a 114 Crores in 5 days and ‘Mukkabaaz’ has made just under 10 Crores since its release on the 12th of January. If you haven’t watched it, I implore you to go and take in this jolting experience while deservedly shelling out some much needed dollars to encourage the filmmakers to not give up on us.
