Mary Kom has won the coveted National Award for the Best Popular Film of 2014 and director Omung Kumar is elated. “The film is a salute to Indian women. Mary is a fighter. She excelled both as a professional and as a mother. Her life is a lesson for those who believe that a professional woman is not capable of running her house properly. At the Stockholm Film Festival, where the film won the best prize, people were surprised that such women exist in India. Mary hasn’t lost touch with her feminine side to excel in a sport known for its masculine character.”
A noted production and set designer before Mary Kom, Omung was known for his larger-than-life set designs for films like Black and Saawariya . He agrees Mary Kom was the most unlikely subject for him.
“I was expected to try something more like Moulin Rouge. But then I also come from a family of actors and have done my own bit as a host. So I wanted something performance-oriented. I asked my friend and co-writer Saiwyn Qadras to search for an inspirational personality, whom the world doesn’t know much about and he came up with the idea of making a biopic on MC Mary Kom, a five-time world champion. I didn’t know about her exploits in the ring and out of it in detail.”
However, his skills as a set designer came to the fore in Mary Kom as well. “People didn’t notice it much because this time it was not over the top. We could not shoot in Manipur. So we had to create her home and locality in Manali. Even Mary was surprised by the similarity. Similarly, her training was shot in a shed that my wife Vanita and I discovered in a discarded shed on Mira Road in Mumbai. Nobody complained that it doesn’t look like a training camp for boxing and perhaps that is the biggest victory for us.”
As for the criticism of picking Priyanka Chopra for the lead role, Omung says, “I have said this in the past that I didn’t want to make a film that will be watched by a few.”
“I thought the story has the potential to reach out to a mass audience and for this we needed a big name. And Priyanka did everything to get into the shape of the boxer. Nobody can complain about her dedication. And most of the criticism came before the release. Once the film unravelled, people forgot about the cheek bone, the eye brow and the accent.”
He admits that he introduced a bit of melodrama in the second half but insists it all emanated from what happened in Mary’s life. “We took a bit of creative liberty to generate a patriotic feel, to intercut her personal pain with the national duty,” he admits.
Omung has now three scripts in his hands. “There is one on the role of Indian soldiers in World War II. But I am not sure whether it will be my next film. It might be my third film considering the kind of scale it requires. I will come up with an announcement soon.”
