An unsettling sense of decay shadows Manohar Aich and his family in Prateek Vats’ debut documentary, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings . As the film opens, Aich, a popular Indian bodybuilder and Mr. Universe winner in 1952, is being ushered in to an event felicitating him on his 101st birthday. A man a fourth his age lends him support by grasping his droopy, wrinkly biceps. Through the film, Aich, who is a celebrity in his north Calcutta neighbourhood, is often asked to flex his muscles at such events, and he obliges.
Trying to think back
The filming of the documentary was started when Aich turned 101 and finished when he was 103. He passed away last year aged 104.
In the film, the centenarian’s memory has faded. “Do you remember your time in Dhaka?” asks the filmmaker at the start. Aich grunts, and continues to play with his dinner. “Do you remember your time with magician P.C. Sorcar?” Vats asks. “I’ve forgotten everything,” Aich responds. “So what do you remember?” the filmmaker prods. “[It’s] just mixed, that’s all,” is Aich’s resigned response.
The inability, and perhaps refusal, to recollect his celebrated past prompted the filmmaker, a production graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India, to steer the documentary away from a traditional biopic and towards an intimate portrait of Aich and his family. “There’s no way we could add more to the knowledge already in the public sphere,” says Vats.
The documentary incorporates archival footage of the bodybuilder at a young age. At 4’11”, Aich, popularly known as ‘Pocket Hercules’, could straighten a metal spring and lift heavy weights without breaking into a sweat. In his dotage, Aich ambles around in his compact house and stares outside the window for comfort. Cinematographer Mehul Bhanti captures Aich’s reticent world through soft, impressionistic shots, reflecting the old man’s blurry perception of the world.
Silent observance
For Aich, each muscle, sculpted to perfection, is a result of perseverance and self-obsession. A society that glorifies machismo applauds him for this, but the film ventures beyond to explore his family’s discomfort with the unwavering priority given to his career.
He may be an accomplished professional, but his contributions as a father and husband are questionable. In his twilight years, his children—themselves ageing—talk of how difficult it is to provide constant care to the centenarian. Aich’s daughter Bani Banerjee prioritises her ailing health over her father’s. The documentary resists judgement, but doesn’t shy away from being a silent observer. “A lot of these biopics focus on the main character and everybody else becomes disposable,” says Vats, for whom Aich’s family forms an integral part of the narrative.
Despite his shortcomings, the bodybuilder’s children take great pride in their father’s achievements, which they complain is undervalued by the government. “No Padma Shri, no Padma Bhushan, nothing,” grumbles his daughter.
His house is brimming with trophies, medals and photographs, but his success never materialised into monetary comfort; neither for Aich, nor his children.
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings looks at Aich and his family from a distance, but there are times when Vats and Bhanti can’t help but become a part of the narrative. The documentary was shot in 45 days, staggered across two years. In this period, both Vats and Bhanti built a close connect with their subject, evident in the film’s opening and closing sequences where Aich interacts with the duo.
Elements of magic
“It was an intimate space and this was bound to happen,” recalls Vats. The filmmaker chose to retain these interactions in the final edit of the film. “It’s not a film about him, we realised. It’s more with him.”
Upon its completion early this year, Vats sent the documentary to various film festivals and is waiting for responses. “But once we get a go ahead from them, we will have public screenings at formal and informal spaces, like schools and colleges; wherever they are willing to screen A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings ,” says Vats, who borrowed the title from a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Much like the Colombian writer’s works, Aich’s life too has an element of magic in it; it’s a story of great strength stored in a deceptively tiny man.
