The Failure of Chak De India

[this piece first appeared on NG]

The saddest films are those that show promise and then amount to not much more than token gestures. Chak De India is such a film. That it is such would not in itself be noteworthy. One has long been accustomed to a self-congratulatory industry that refuses to recognize the hollowness of its system in every conceivable sense and equally self-congratulatory audiences that wallow in all the mediocrity so offered every weekend with a new release. What has been rather more disconcerting in this instance is the critical reception this film has garnered which has all but annointed Chak De India as a cinematic milestone and has tried its best (for reasons I shall get into later) to create a faux ‘cult film’ or a faux ‘buzz film’. One might be forgiven for thinking that this film is another Lagaan moment in Hindi cinema or at least a Rang De Basanti moment. It is manifestly neither. Similarly Shahrukh Khan (for whom the media is always ideologically overdetermined, with of course a ‘double whammy’ in this case with the added advantage of a ‘nationalistic’ film that placates and pacifies far more than it questions or subverts) has supposedly produced an extraordinary career performance that amounts to no more than a subdued portrayal with some genuinely affecting moments. That many of the interesting strands in the film were not developed the right way (if at all) is regrettable. But the fact that this film has also become an excuse for more ‘blindness’ is even more distressing.

Before moving on to the film’s politics I should state right away that even as pure narrative I found the film no more than somewhat engaging up until the last twenty minutes or so when the climax of the game draws the viewer in. The story hits very few highs and mostly operates at a plateau. The crux of the film revolves around the training of the team and this has been handled in very amateurish fashion. It is impossible to believe that this is a team being prepared for a World Cup. This would not be a problem in a poetic fantasy-fable like Lagaan but becomes one in a film that has some pretensions to realism or at least naturalism. The sense of struggle that being in an Indian female hockey team presumably entails, specially one aiming to compete in a ‘World’ tournament, never comes through.

Shimit Amin must of course be credited for touching upon some relatively raw issues. From Kabir’s victimization as Muslim to the exclusion of women in the national conversation in more ways than one a number of issues are touched upon. And of course the Kabir strand of the tale is the most evocative one. But the director never does much with these. Instead he is quite happy to peddle an easy, lazy, ‘urban-friendly’ nationalism where all these antogonistic strands might be ironed over. Shahrukh’s character therefore might only find some form of redemption and in essense ‘restitution’ if he wins the tournament. Of course he wins and all’s well. But what if Kabir had not won? A nation that constantly mistrusts its minorities is a problematic entity but one where the minority has to undergo a ritual to prove its loyalty is even more problematic. Kabir goes through such a ritual but in doing so confirms the logic of his accusers. The ‘provincial’ women similarly come together as a ‘nation(alistic)’ unit and efface the particular. In fact in a rather terrible irony the director eventually chooses to highlight the ‘Northerners’ here, subscribing to a hegemonistic code whereby only the Northern ‘native’ might be granted ‘utterance’. Amin seemingly repeats the basic nationalistic move of effacing all difference (religious, ethnic, gender-based, and so on) in the service of a greater good. But this is not entirely true. In Amin’s ideal India the Muslim has his/her optimal space. Presumably this is true for other religious enterprises as well. However, any politics that subverts the national project must be disallowed. The ‘girls’ can form a winning outfit only after they forget origin and ethnic difference. This plays very well to ‘multiplex audience’ preferences in these matters. As in the popular cliche, what is wrong with India is that people are only interested in their states!

Shimit Amin’s nationalism is a bland one that does not question any of the existing (in this context ‘urban’) platitudes on the subject. The religious opiate is granted but not ethnic or linguistic particularity. Local politics must be muzzled to allow ‘Team India’ to win. The Muslim is always neatly enframed in this wider nationalism and therefore any injustice that occurs here must always be a ‘majority’ injustice. On the other hand the more local ‘nationalisms’ as a matter of definition subvert the overarching ‘Central’ one and consequently must be overcome.

What is really the message in Chak De India beyond the literal narrative? There is no serious commentary offered in any sense. This was surely called for after the director was ‘responsible’ enough to bring up these issues in the first place. Chak De India could have been an even simpler tale than it is. There was no need to invoke these specters…

A few examples would be in order here as a means of examining why Chak de India fails almost entirely despite an interesting premise. The first that comes to mind is Lagaan. This again involves a sport though this has been greatly misread in some quarters as a ’sports film’. In the world of Lagaan the game of cricket simply becomes the mode by which a proper assault on the ‘colonial’ can be launched. In other words the sport offers an avenue by means of which categories of the ‘colonial’ can be greatly de-stabilized. Within the narrative ‘cricket’ is not just a sports equation involving a superior team and an inferior one. It is a category of ‘knowledge’ that is automatically foreclosed to the ‘native’. By winning the game the ‘native’ humiliates the ‘colonizer’ only because the latter’s categories or ‘knowledge’ is upset. In yet other words the game of cricket becomes the exemplary site where an interrogation of the ‘colonial’ might be launched. In our own ‘post-colonial’ world we can easily ascertain the truth of the Lagaan universe. Or rather Lagaan recreates in an earlier ‘colonial’ age the evidence it gathers from our own ‘post-colonial’ one.

Another good example is Rang De Basanti. The film’s politics is quite questionable. The director takes away with the left hand what he gives with the right. The students are paradigmatic ‘cases’ throughout the narrative and the commit an ‘extreme’ political act as such. But towards the end Mehra performs a sleight of hand and ‘particularises’ these students. To wit, the protagonists are typical and quintessential as they laugh and cry and fight and frolic. But once they engage in a ‘politics’ they are immediately ‘nullified’ and become ‘extreme’ exceptions. There should be political protest, there should be student movements, but what these should lead to beyond mere sloganeering is anyone’s guess by the end of this film. Once again a conformist status quo is restored. But unlike Chak De India there is at least serious loss involved here. There is an important death in the film, there is a representation of the ‘commoner’ terrified by the anonymity conferred on him by post-colonial modernity, there is another death that is brought about by all these factors and finally there are more deaths that even if ‘normalised’ by the director within his narrative cannot entirely be normalised by the audiences. Whether one defines Rang De Basanti’s politics as muddled or not what remains inescapable is that Mehra’s stakes are serious because these lead to serious consequences. On the other hand the traumatic can simply be reversed in Chak De India. The national traumas of Chak De India can lead to rather uplifting endings because these have not been seriously situated in the first place.

Swades was another film where Gowariker was quite unsure in terms of deciding between his politics and the more humanistic tugs of his storyline. At the same time the director opened up a representation of the non-urban that was and is much desirable in the present Bollywood scene. I say this with some hesitation since I am also rather troubled by the precise nature of Gowariker’s ‘rural’ imaginings. But besides this the film raised its own ‘nationalism’ without erasing the ethical stakes. In many ways Swades offers a valuable antidote to the irresponsible ‘diasporic desires’ of much of 90s cinema.

Finally Guru. Rathnam can justly be accused of manufacturing a film that is entirely in keeping with the mood of his multiplex audiences. Certainly the film is not free of this charge. However the director is also sly enough to introduce seemingly minor plotlines into the narrative that in turn destabilize such an easy reading. The most obvious example here is that of the paraplegic girl who in many ways forms the most genuine bond with the film’s central protagonist. The key scene in this regard is of course Meena’s death scene with Guru reduced to tears and Rahman’s (and Gulzar’s) extremely moving and even somewhat mysterious song playing in the background (as it has indeed played earlier in Meena’s scenes). As the film progresses Rathnam juxtaposes human achievement and legend with the ‘bodily’. People grow old and grotesque, people are cripples, people are paralysed, people nevertheless transcend the ‘bodily’ by way of ‘dreams’, whether these are realised or not. Guru realises his dreams, he even overcomes his physical ailment, Meena cannot and yet as the background song reminds us it is the desire and the dream that matter most. To the extent that Guru and Meena are dreamers they are allies and kindred souls. Where they part company is in terms of actual achievement but Rathnam’s sympathies are always with his dreamers far more than they are with his super-achievers (even his technical choices as filmmaker reflect this — Iruvar and Guru are both good examples). Once again there is death in this world or permanent loss.

The point with all these perhaps disparate examples is that films might be successful to various degrees when trying to push the envelope. A director making a commercial product is necessarily compromising at some point or the other. The marriage between art and good commerce or even meaningful entertainment and the box office is always a rare one in any industry. But some films attempt more than others and are therefore glorious failures even when not complete successes. These are films that give the viewer something to think about, something to engage with beyond the merely ‘entertaining’. Chak De India could have been such a film, Shimit Amin might just have stuck to the ‘Muslim’ theme and developed it more or else just worked with the ‘feminist’ angle as opposed to making a potpourri of these and diluting each in turn. There are authentic moments in his film but the film is never more than the sum of its parts.

I started off with the ‘reception’ of this film and the attempts to contruct a ‘classic’ out of this. More than even the film’s failings this ‘reception’ has been most dismaying to behold. Whether it is the sheer partisans or simply those who are ideological susceptible to the message or both there has been a great rush to declare this film everything from a classic to a ‘cult’ classic, paradoxical as this might seem. In a related sense Shahrukh has been overpraised beyond measure. This performance of his bears a similarity to that in Swades. Both are subdued outings by the actor but Shahrukh is more affecting in Chak de India than in Swades where he struck flat notes for the most part. After a rather long time Shahrukh has also managed to bring vulnerability to his character and it could not have come for a better role. Yet there is something rather gross about all the critical praise being directed towards him. In an odd sense he is not even at the forefront in most of the film. It is the women who take center stage, who are more fully developed as characters (at least the central ones), and whose ‘episodes’ in every sense form the film’s backbone. It is not at all to underrate Shahrukh to suggest that he does well to handle a role that is somewhat secondary in terms of character development as well as dramatic weight but that it would take an actor of finer skills to truly score remarkably with these relative disadvantages. In sum Shahrukh interests one in the film but does not infuse enough into it as actor or as star to be able to lift the film beyond the obvious. Nonetheless this is a Shahrukh one would like to see more of in the future. To this degree the success of this film is a marker in the right direction.

If I have seemed harsh on Chak De India it is because I think that Shimit Amin could have genuinely achieved something vastly more profound with his film. Leaving aside the politics he could certainly have offered a more compelling narrative. As things stand Ab Tak Chappan must be judged (even accounting for its huge letdown in the climax) the superior effort in just about all departments of film-making. Then again Yashraj produced this venture. One cannot expect miracles!

Relevant portions from an ensuing discussion:

1
Your points are fair ones. I do think that the bar is a bit higher for CDI than it would be for a Manmohan Desai film. Because in a purely commercial effort the director is always going for easy generalisations as he (or she) intends to include the largest audience possible for the film (though this idea might be questioned for 90s cinema where only a certain set was ever included!). But CDI is still more of a ‘realistic’ narrative that is not simply seeking to earn brownie points in this sense.

On the ‘gadaar’ point the problem is that such a slur can only be ‘effaced’ when Kabir effaces all doubts about his ‘loyalties’ by actually winning something. In other words that word on the wall would never have been stricken out if Kabir hadn’t won (in this regard consider another ‘writing’ in another film that inscribed on the body itself and can never be effaced). The film could have been a sensitive exploration of the treatment Kabir suffers at the hands of the institutions and the general populace, instead it converts into a personal odyssey, where the only way Kabir can ‘rescue’ his name is by accepting the terms of his branding and turning it around from thereon. I think it would have made for a wonderful (if commercially less viable) film if Kabir had lost that final match and yet through the course of his trials with the team somehow convinced everyone that he had always been sincere. But I must confess, I just find this entire structure deeply troublesome. I raised the Desai example. There is never a Muslim (or Christian) in Desai who ever has to prove anything. The status of the minority in a Desai film is simply as much of a given as that of his majority. I have argued before that the former is even more privileged than the latter. And his films are out and out commercial ones even if I would never equate the commercial with the ‘non-serious’. With CDI the stakes are much higher, Amin seems to understand these for a while and then decides to go another way. It is a sports film where the coach just happens to be a guy trying to redeem himself along the way. I think this question is too important to be so cavalierly treated, specially at this moment in Indian history. I don’t doubt Amin’s intentions, just his way of going about things. Similarly a ‘national integration’ message in the context of sports isn’t the worst one around but again the film aims to be a more sober effort and therefore the ’sectionalism’ of the female protagonists coming off as simply ‘baseless’ is rather troubling. There are personality conflicts here as well as regional prejudices. However the film twins the two. Amin’s heart is in the right place but the film’s liberalism is a rather easy one that seems (to my mind) less acceptable in such a venture. Again to take my Lagaan example the sport here is less the site where any sort of antagonism might be staged (colonial, sectional and so on) and more one where antagonisms of any kind might be smoothed over. Yes, ‘India’ wins when the marginalized, whether Muslims or women, are included; at the same time those excluded also ‘win’ when they work their way from the margins to the center and adopt the nationalist narrative wholesale. Consider Balraj Sahni’s Muslim in Garam Hawa who never thinks he has to do anything to prove he is as much of an Indian as anyone else, who never finds himself definitionally problematic even though the politics around him is constantly ’suspending’ his status as full Indian citizen. And finally I find all of this a bit more annoying precisely because I think that such generalisation conform rather easily to urban Indian (specially multiplex) sensibilities on the subject. Not that everyone here is a ‘liberal’ but Amin keeps both groups happy by having Shahrukh go through a test to ‘prove’ his loyalty.

2
I disagree that CDI was simply a commercial entertainer. It is more than this. If it were only a masala effort I would not find the politics as troubling. Having said that such a politics in this kind of precise configuration is unlikely to emerge in a purely commercial film. In other words commercial film directors always hedge their bets and are unlikely to raise such specific questions or issues. But in a different vein consider RDB. The real stress here after one is done with all the politics is really on the common (nameless, faceless) man (or woman). I again find some of the politics here muddled but Mehra performs a masala move by emptying out some of the more serious politics on display here and by reducing things to the ‘us’ against ‘them’ structure. It’s either the colonizer vs the colonized or the common man vs the slimy politicians! The normative characters in his film are mostly divorced from any ‘ism’ (political or religious or what have you) and are moved to act only when a friend is killed and a vulgar and wholly corrupt politician blames the accident on the friend. Not just this. Even the ‘right wingers’ here are as cynical as everyone else and in true masala fashion are also decontructed in the more effective way. Throughout all this it is all about a group of friends, even the Atul Kulkarni character sheds his political charge! The film resorts to easy abstractions that are understandable in a masala register even if the film ought to have done better. But CDI never sheds its original premise. Kabir has to go back to his old ancestral house, has to be able to live with his neighbors, and therefore has to win the game.

I also think that Rathnam is much misunderstood specially in the context of Guru. He has always been a remarkably non-judgmental director. But these questions become even more tangled when the film in question is a bio-pic. Because it becomes that much harder to separate the author’s (auteur’s) views from the chief protagonist’s. In Nayakan Rathnam is far more problematic in making a tragic hero out of his protagonist. But in any case there is nowhere a serious questioning of the choices he has made through the narrative. His daughter launches into a diatribe at one point but Rathnam is not on anyone’s side in the debate. And again by giving the ‘hero’ of his tale a tragic death he certainly raises important ethical issues. In most gangster films the life of the gangster is somehow justified by way of socio-economic commentary and so on. This doesn’t happen in Nayakan.

In Guru Rathnam’s designs are also missed in other ways. He is not being a triumphalist about the ‘Gurus’ of India. It is that the nation at large, specially in urban India. is triumphalist about such figures. These have been the truest cultural heroes of a newly (economically) liberated India. But Rathnam is careful. The opening and the ending of the film are somewhat mysterious. The element of dream is rather important here and as I read the film the jury is still out on the Guru figure. But also there is within the narrative a set of characters ranging from the crusading Madhavan to the Guru’s spouse, who in effect do not entirely buy into the Guru mythology. As I said yeserday it’s interesting that of the major characters it is only the paraplegic girl who does. These are the two most allied figures in the film and one must wonder why this is so. Again I do not believe that Rathnam frees himself entirely from the dangers of a conformist message, the film clearly lends itself to this reading in a very overt way, but Rathnam calibrates this risk by making this film a bio-pic and by making the central character ultimately a lot more elusive than say Velu Naicker. On a related note I would argue that this passage from straight, humanistic bio-pic to one where the central character always seems a little mysterious is evident even in Iruvar.

Finally on the media reception my point is that with a SRK movie the ‘critical’ bar is often much lower than it is for the movies of other stars. But in this case I don’t just see it as the ‘SRK factor’ but also the film’s ideology that these reviewers have been comfortable with.