Aamir Khan‘s Dangal has collected over ₹1,500 crore and is becoming the highest-grossing Indian film but when I watched the film after a six-months wait, I found the film wasn’t worth even ₹1.50 crore.
Dangal is about a man, once a national wrestling champion, who gives up his career due to the shortage of money but sees his dream of winning Gold medal coming true in his daughters, Geeta (played by Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Babita (played by Sanya Malhotra). Being based on Indian wrestling family of Phogat, Dangal is a huge insult in the name of the real-life facts accuracy. In short, it is heavily fictionalized with more than 80% of the story dramatized. I have collected a few points which I found from various media sources.
1) According to the authorized biography of Mahavir Singh Phogat, Akhada, it was his wife Daya, who was disappointed that the first child wasn’t a boy.
2) The coach is depicted as villainous who is dummy enough to give wrong techniques every time he trains Geeta; whereas the real coach has claimed that only mechanism was changed, not the techniques.
3) Geeta losing first-round tournaments globally is completely wrong. The film shows her winning her first Gold medal in international competition in the Commonwealth game whereas she did win a gold medal a year before in Jalandhar.
4) Geeta didn’t cut her hair before the Commonwealth games. The video of the final game shows Geeta with long hair.
5) Aamir getting locked before the final fight is very incorrect. As per the biography mentioned above, Mahavir did watch the final.
6) The final game wasn’t that competitive; in fact, it was a one-sided two-round victory by Geeta with the score 3-0, 8-0.
Even besides the factual accuracies, the director Nitesh Tiwari, who is heavily praised and accoladed for his direction, has made the silliest of mistakes as few examples below:
1) The referee changes between the scenes in young Mahavir’s early fight. Can you believe it?
2) When Mahavir moves Patiala for six months, he is financially low but minutes later he owns a scooter and even books a whole theater to watch the DVD of his daughter’s fight? *claps*
3) Mahavir gets locked and not a single security guy bothers to watch the series of unfortunate events happening in such an international competition?
Performances? Yes, performances were the first rate but let me talk about Aamir Khan. He finally won a Filmfare Award in 16 years but the question is, what was so challenging about this role? Body transformation does count when the acting is judged but you will watch Aamir’s fatty character in the whole film as the young muscular phase of his role hardly is on the screen for 15 minutes.
If I judge his performance as a standout from two different criteria, which is 1) best performances of the year 2016, and 2) Amir’s best performances in the last 15 years, this role is still nowhere. So Filmfare yet again made a blunder in awarding it to a wrong individual.
Film’s technical aspects are not convincing at all. A running time of 160 minutes does not justify at all due to lengthy fight sequences and unnecessary songs.
Dangal is a one-timer and can be watched on a repeat mode for the sake of entertainment.
Ratings: 4/10
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Sami Naik | Film Critic 