Jobs vs. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag

Granted.  At first glance, the title of this post looks ludicrous.  Jobs vs. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (BMB)!! Is there even a comparison? Or is it that ridiculous? I mean neither of the movies is a classic by any standards. They did decent business on the box office. Got mixed reviews.  So I would say making a comparison would be fair. If we are to compare the two movies on comparative box office performance, critics reviews, audience reviews, delivery on what the trailers promised, BMB is the clear winner. Sure Jobs will earn or probably already has earned more money than BMB since it’s produced by a Hollywood banner.....has a much wider audience considering that it’s in English....which is the global language.....more people watch Hollywood movies......Jobs is nothing short of a tech God and global icon.....blah blah blah.....

But the point I am trying to make here does not relate to the success of the two movies. Nor am I a film scholar to compare the technical aspects of the two movies and give a verdict. And I am definitely not comparing the achievements of these two great men and say who’s better than the other or has achieved more. They are both achievers in their own right.

The point I am trying to make here is that the Indian film industry (or at least the Hindi film industry) has not yet cracked the biographical movie code.  Well maybe that’s too dramatic a statement and an over –simplification.  A number of movies based on real life events/people have been made in the past few years. Sure, some of them like The Dirty Picture (TDP), Bose, and Guru had good performances and were engaging and were critical/box-office successes. But the question I want to ask here is, do they succeed as biographical movies? Do you while watching the movie feel like you are a part of the protagonist’s life?  Does the movie stay with you when you leave the theater? In my opinion, the true motive of making a biographical movie is to bring forth to an audience, the extra-ordinary life of a person in an engaging and entertaining manner. I say entertaining manner because unlike a documentary that usually presents facts about a person’s lives to an audience and is not necessarily meant to entertain, a film is meant to do just that!

Movies like BMB, TDP, Guru though good are let down by the song and dance routine and over-dramatization of scenes which are typical of Bollywood movies. I strongly feel that biographies are one genre of movies where the song and dance routine and typical Bollywood masala should be done away with. I mean really, did we need to see Dhirubhai Ambani sing and dance??  

Of the two movies I have seen recently, Jobs and BMB, I knew almost everything about Steve Jobs and almost nothing about Milkha Singh.  On paper, I should have liked BMB more than Jobs. But in reality, despite what critics say, Jobs was far more engaging. It’s not to say that Steve Jobs’ life is any more interesting than Milkha Singh. It’s just that in Jobs’ case, the movie beautifully cuts you off from 2013 and puts you in Silicon Valley circa 1970s and brings you all the way back to 2000s. It convinces you that the actors you see on screen are the world’s most iconic nerds that we have read about. With BMB, in parts yes, one does believe that it is indeed Milkha Singh that you see on screen but the tone is broken by all the razzmatazz. Scenes like the one where Milkha goes back to his village in Pakistan or the one in which his father is massacred in a very Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter-ish motif make you feel the story is more fictional than biographical.  To quote one of the reviews that I read, Milkha Singh deserved a better biography.

I think what most film makers that make biographies in Bollywood struggle with is running the thin line between making a biography that’s commercial (TDP, Guru) and one that’s more documentary like (Bose, Sardar). Very few film makers have been able to put forth biographies that show you a glimpse into a person’s life without inspiring snores out of you. A special mention here for Harishchandrachi Factory and Paan Singh Tomar (PST) both of which I thought were brilliant movies. Both movies threw aside the song and dance routine and unnecessary dramatization for a simple screenplay that made you feel for the protagonists.

I hope the movies on Mary Kom and Kishore Kumar that are due to come out in the next 2-3 years will do better justice to the people that they represent. But frankly, I doubt it!