Chak De!Ofcourse!!

In this post please let me review Chak De, I know everyone's doing it, but no one has said what I want to yet.



I like Chak De, I saw it in it's third week at the halls. After the movie I was waiting in an un-usually long que at the toi...restrooms, when an old woman with Kanjeevaram saree, jasmine flowers in hair et all, said to the girl ahead of her, "Isn't this movie nice?So much better than Lagaan"



Well I haven't seen Lagaan but I agree with her. I din't see Lagaan because in some way I dread stereotypes. Chak De on the other hand was interesting, not because it does anything new in terms of story, story-telling, special-effects or infact anything new in the realm of cinema as such.



But what makes it click? I believe it works because it is a super positive film. Well most films which deal with these kind of topics for instance coaches taking loser teams to victory are somewhat inspiring by themselves. But Chak De is not so in your face. It doesn't deal with any kind of melodrama.



It is the story of a coach training a hockey team of women in India. Such a simple story, told so well. Let's break it up because each part has so many parts.



The coach- the coach being Muslim was wrongly accused of siding Pakistan in the past. It made me think of muslims in India who are so often asked to defend their stand on their nationality. It also made me think of Kapil Dev who was wrongly accused and how the media really broke the man. But the strength of the coach Kabir's character lies in his belief and faith in himself and his dream.



Hockey- I often think in a party if one is asked to stand in the centre and tell a joke, the joke should be "Hockey is the national game of India". So it was a nice feeling to see some hockey and this really made me open my eyes to the sports scene!!So now I am proud to know that India won the Nehru Cup in football, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Sania Mirza who has reached the third round in the U.S open in tennis!!

Also it was crazy the way everone in the hall was cheering loudly for the players in the movie!



Women- One thing which really angers me, I have noticed, is when men are considered superior just by virtue of being men. So ofcourse I like themes which deal intelligently with gender issues. This movie is not like some movies which deal with gender issues making all men seem like assholes(it's my blog and asshole is not considered indignity of language here).
Apart from the obvious theme of showing women as strong, capable and equal the movie also deals with all the women in the movie itself and all their moods, dreams and complexities, which was nice.



India- For instance many people believe that inherent in nationalism is not love for one's country but hate for another's. But in Chak De there is no downplaying of any other nationality.
Here an attempt is made to look within, to see what it is that builds us together as a nation. It is true we are so diverse, as I sat in the movie hall there were people speaking tamil to my left, people from the North-East behind me, boys speaking Hindi in front of me and to the right were people speaking Kannada and all of us were widly cheering the movie!!



If I were the director I would edit out a couple of scenes in the movie, one for instance would definetely be the part of the Australian man hoisting the Indian flag. That for me is a sore spot in the movie. Apart from some forgivable faux pas, nationalism is treated as team spirit, and how when one plays in the team one plays for the team.



Also interesting was one instance when the team had to play against Argentina and they were getting badly roughed up on the field, the coach tells them that if they were hit once to hit back twice as hard!!Well, well, well leaving our dear Mahatma's words behind......I guess all is fair in love and sports!



Well apart from the themes all actors do so well, the movie has no song and dance routines, thank god! Or else imagine if they had to run around some eucalyptus trees in Australia with hockey sticks and short skirts!
In the Bollywood world of dull, flat, uni-dimensional films Chak De is fun!Chak De is also what I would like to call responsible entertainment.



Well, thank you for sitting through the review.