“Bhaag Milkha Bhaag” has lived up to its name. Not only a box office success, the film has run away with most of the trophies at all major popular awards. From IIFA in Florida to Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is busy collecting awards and fighting jet lag. And the icing on the cake came last Saturday with the National Award for the best popular film providing wholesome entertainment. However, there has been a section of critics which felt that Mehra didn’t do justice to the sportsman in telling the tale of Partition. In Delhi to receive the award, Mehra took the criticism on the chin and tried to clear the air.
Excerpts from an interview:
At the production stage the film was considered to be a risky proposition in terms of content, casting and canvas
From the marketing point of view, commercially risky subject, commercially viable actor, are just labels. I never think about them. There has to come a point where I am compelled to tell a story. That has to happen when I am attempt something. My only concern was that the work should reach out to the maximum. My expression of art is that it should reach out to the world at large without compromising on the story. Whenever I listen to a great raga or see a landmark painting I wish that it should have reached out to more numbers.
Many critics saw it more as a Partition story than the story of a sportsman
It is indeed a Partition story. I didn’t set out to make a sports biopic. When I read Milkha Singh’s biography all my childhood and college memories came alive and I went to him and told him I want to tell the story of his lost childhood. The people who lose out the most in ethnic violence are the women and the kids. Milkha Singh is one of them. He did not suffer because some dacoits had to come to his house. He faced violence because his country was partitioned. It is a Partition story, nothing else. I was fortunate that he is a living legend. I would speak to him for hours and hours and my cues were when his eyes would well up or when he would laugh like a kid.
Are we still looking for closure for the wounds of Partition?
It is such a blot on our history that that there can’t be a closure. How can there be a closure to the ghetto violence of World War-II? The only thing is that we will keep applying the balm to the wounds and keep sweetening the pain. But somehow the Muzaffarnagars and Gujarats don’t let us do that. Despite these odds the youngster went out and won the world.
Many sports journalists didn’t like the creative liberties that you took with the facts considering Milkha’s achievements are well documented
I was not documenting the life of a sportsman. It was my interpretation of his life. When he looked back in Rome (Olympics) it was a technical error. Milkha Singh told me that he was running so fast that when he emerged from the 200m bend he thought that may be he should conserve his energy and looked back. I interpreted it as when he looked back he saw his past. That was the first scene that I wrote. It is not licence. It is about doing my job as a storyteller. I wanted to tell a story to bring a point view rather than putting together a document. His coach Ranveer Singh didn’t even go to Rome because like these days in those days too officials used to outnumber the coaches. We took that liberty because we didn’t want the story to go there. It was not our main concern. Tomorrow, if I make a film on Gandhi and Hitler I will again bring my point of view.
The climax race against Abdul Khaliq was not Milkha’s greatest achievement.
The greatest victory is the victory over your own self. He ran the race against himself. Tomorrow, if you are mugged in a dark alley you will not take that alley. Pakistan was the place where his demons resided. I haven’t done anything to the fact that he decided not to go to Pakistan and told this much to Jawaharlal Nehru. My interpretation is that it takes courage to go back and compete in a land which robbed you off everything. The film worked because we don’t have closure on these matters. Look at Gujarat, look at Mumbai, look at Delhi these are not events in the distant past. And the film told people that even if this happens to you don’t give up on life.
There were concerns about storytelling as well like how come the secretary of Nehru didn’t know about Milkha’s back story?
This is like baal ki khaal nikalana . (One suggests him nitpicking but he insists on the Hindi phrase.) Why do you say once upon a time long, long ago…That’s how the stories are told. “Schindler’s List” was not told the way the events transpired. What Milkha Singh means to us was my main concern. And that is not very difficult to decipher.
The violence in the film is very stylised…
While briefing my cameraman, art department and actors I used to tell them that it is Milkha’s nightmare. What happens in a nightmare is that there are some facts and then your mind adds something to it over the years. It keeps growing. But once you accept them suddenly colour comes into them.
Any other detail that you feel the media missed
Nobody has noticed that out of 3 hour 8 minute long film, 1 hour and 22 minutes of the film is silent. We just created those moments; they were not on the page. The last reel of the film has only one dialogue. ‘ Milkha Singh yeh tumhari zindagi ke aakhri race ho sakti hai… daudunga bhi waise hi. In the 22 minute long climax of the film the hero speaks only half a sentence.
Did you have to fight your box office demons after “Delhi 6”?
The audience had put me on a pedestal after “Rang De Basanti” and didn’t expect any mistake from me. Also, “Delhi 6” dealt with a sensitive subject and I literally showed the mirror to the society. When in 2014 elections can be polarised I was telling the audience in 2009 that Hindu and Muslim mean the same thing. This time I worked on my craft and decided to tell the same thing in a round about away.
What’s next?
Mehra is working on a contemporary adaptation of Punjabi legend of Mirza Sahibaan. One of the rare folk tale of tragic love where the name of the male protagonist comes first, the film will mark the debut of Anil Kapoor’s son Harshvardhan and Saiyami Kher, granddaughter of yesteryear heroine Usha Kiron.
