If not for anything else, Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra’s Bhaag Milkha Bhaag should score full
marks for the hard work put in by Farhan Akhtar to impersonate Mikha Singh, the
Flying Sikh as the sportsperson was famously known as. Farhan speaks with his
sinews, which he has amply developed to look like Milkha, an army personnel and
dedicated athlete. But more importantly, he has effectively brought to Milkha Singh multiple
shades, bringing to life an enigmatic character whose public image of the
Flying Sikh hides behind it a vulnerable private life of loss, betrayal and trauma.
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag could have ended up
being another sentimental bildungsroman of an underdog’s journey from the
margins to the centre. But, it has brilliantly averted such a predicament. The public
and the private are curiously mingled in this biopic told in painstaking detail,
where personal experiences of a historical calamity connect the life of an
individual to the people of a certain geographical area carrying in their
collective unconscious the agony of that calamity. This is where Bhaag Milkha Bhaag transcends the narrow
boundaries of an individual’s life to relate the story of ‘a people’. The symbolism
in the title is not hard to decode: it is not only Milkha who is running away
from a traumatic memory of the past; the people on both sides of the border
that divides India and Pakistan are also trying to flee the prison of such a memory, the memory of the holocaust of the Partition. That one historical event
which has left such deadly scars in the hearts of the people that even after sixty-five
years they have not ceased to bleed. In this sense, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag doesn’t really turn
the clock to an earlier decade; but addresses the contemporary times, when
communal violence, mass slaughter, state-controlled pogroms, segregation based
on race, and militant nationalism are on the rise. Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra and
Prasoon Joshi’s Milkha Singh is therefore more of a metaphor than a character, on
whose predicament the tragic consequences of the Partition are mapped out. The
flashbacks and the black-and-white album images of the Partition which have
been used in several other films as well act as constant reminder of a past
which is impossible to erase.
Yet,
despite itself, the film almost helplessly promotes territorial nationalism,
where the ongoing Indo-Pakistan rivalry is addressed with a certain degree of
unpretentious condescension for the warring neighbour. The film might be
adhering to a historical truth, but, nonetheless, the Otherness of the people
across the border is quite well established by the end. But ironically, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag had actually set out
to question this strife which is actually mindless. I would not, however, take
the filmmaker to task for this; for, this is also an aftereffect of the
Partition: the prejudice is so deep-seated that it raises its head even at the
slightest opportunity.
On another
level Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, just like Chak De! India, is a story of
will-power, perseverance and untiring enterprise. The film’s celebration of Milkha’s
hard work, abstinence and discipline might help it land in the syllabus of the MBA
course! However, the film might be attacked for stereotyping the woman: she is
either the loving mother or the wayward seductress who distracts men from
reaching their goal. Another drawback is its length: at 187 minutes the film seems
to drag. The editor could have been a little more merciless!
Image Courtesy:santabanta.com
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