Looking back too far

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (BMB) was a loaded run.

The filmmakers took BMB’s natural difference — which is nothing but Milkha Singh for subject – and packaged it into an instructional epic on the difference.

Milkha Singh emerges like a phoenix from Partition’s flames. He was transformed into the muscled gentleman on the film’s poster.

Partition and Pakistan loomed large in the movie. Milkha Singh’s life told with grey skies, swirling clouds, hooded horsemen, burning fire, loud music, editing techniques and slow motion sequences for emphasis, served to contrast his eventual rise, but used in excess, felt overbearing.

The hype around India-Pakistan rivalry edged out the Flying Sikh’s fourth place-finish at the Olympics. So the audience whistled and clapped when Milkha Singh beat Pakistani sprinter Abdul Khaliq (at the Tokyo Asian Games).

Years ago in school, we remembered Milkha Singh because he finished fourth at the Olympics. How strange — I thought the film avoided showcasing his best-known achievement and chose instead, something that provided a winner and a loser for popular consumption.

What is BMB?

Viewed artistically, running may be running away from something. The film suggests a link between Milkha Singh at the Rome Olympics — he looks back while running and loses a medal — and previous traumatic life experiences.

Continuing the link, he looks back while running in some of those scenes from childhood. Such reasoning is fine except that in BMB, the black hole of Partition, interspersed through the narrative, kept sucking the film’s momentum back in, much like India’s own self image, never free of the ghosts of Partition. We have its resultant habit — you haven’t beaten the world till you have beaten Pakistan.

It is as disturbing as the other Indian habit, often complementary to the first — you haven’t won till you have won over the market which loves to beat Pakistan.

Watching BMB, I wondered — is this a film on India’s greatest athlete or a reminder of the pains of Partition? The two are inseparable for Milkha Singh’s life and likely for his generation.

Problem is, as event and consequence, Partition scarred not only them but exhausted a whole sub-continent with its continuing legacy. Laboured beyond a point, the theme distracts from Milkha Singh the athlete just as India-Pakistan rivalry in cricket became more politics than cricket. It took a toll on the film. BMB had a lot on Partition and Pakistan and a fair amount of running. But critically it had very little about running, coaching (apart from dialogues like, “Well done my boy”), race strategies and similar vignettes from competitive sport.

As for competitors, it was mainly one — Abdul Khaliq. That narrowness disappointed for a film on Milkha Singh, who expanded our horizons by putting an Indian athlete in an Olympic finals.

Keep it easy

For memorable cinema, it should have been either Partition and Pakistan, or Milkha Singh with full inquiry into selected realm. Or, BMB should have evolved a more elegant, less tiring idiom conveying both Partition and runner. It did neither.

Wikipedia’s page on the athlete says of the Rome Olympics episode that he looked back suspecting he may be unable to sustain the pace. That’s explanation rooted in running. No confusion. I wish BMB had thought back and made the film easy with just enough looking back.

But then, the excessive looking back is BMB’s market strength for Milkha Singh’s struggles at the starting line of his life are what make him endearingly common, reinforcing the faith that if we try, we will overcome.

(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

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