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!
