Dangal - It's Who You Fight For
Thoughts On: Dangal (Wrestling Competition, 2016)
Unable to fulfil his own dreams of winning a gold medal for his country, a father attempts to turn his daughters into world-class wrestlers.
Dangal is a sensational sports epic grounded in emotional enormity. Following an ex-wrestlter, Mahavir Singh Phogat, who trains his two daughters, Geeta and Babita, to be wrestling champions, this is a loose biopic of the Phogat family. The Phogat sisters, of which there are six, are famous throughout India as wrestling champions at various levels of achievement. However, following the oldest sister, Dangal is less a biopic of the whole family and more of a sports drama about a rather confined father-daughter relationship.
Whilst this film is almost completely faultless, critique can be made on the way in which this 'biopic' is framed. Instead of depicting the whole family, or even just the two eldest as is intermittently implied throughout, Dangal has some peripheral discord about it. In such, anyone who has siblings or children will instantly sense a strong sentiment of favouritism both in the characterisation of the main figures and in the framing of the narrative. Unfortunately, this leaves you with a subtle sense of disappointment when you realised that the second oldest sister is just as accomplished as her older sibling. And, whilst this only manifests itself throughout the narrative in the form of curiosity - in wanting to know more about the younger sister - with the end, it certainly feels like we are cheated out of a fuller, fairer story.
Looking past these ethical issues of structure and framing, it is, however, very hard to critique Dangal from a technical and experiential perspective. Whilst it is possible to point to the obviously Disney-fied and clearly constructed story, I struggle to see that kind of critique as particularly relevant or pertinent.
Formula is certainly the sport-drama's friend. If we look the most iconic examples of the genre - the Rocky and Karate Kid films - we see that they work very comfortably within the realms of predictability. We do find sports-dramas that operate outside of these bounds, Million Dollar Baby and The Wrestler for example, but they're structured as straight dramas with sports as a side-note. This begins to imply the fact that sport-dramas are very much so like adventures; we all know how they must go, and thus predictability is a key convention, leaving the art of the adventure to be its framing, world building a character population. When films attempt to subvert traditional structures of sport-dramas, they then cease to signify the genre - and such is true of adventure films; just sending a character out into the world isn't really enough to qualify an 'adventure film'. In fact, we can understand the sport-drama to be a microcosm of the adventure. Classical adventures follow the hero's journey structure of the departure, the initiation and the return. There are further substructures of this narrative form, and their specification will lead us down a rabbit hole of debate, so we won't go into them. However, when adventure films, much like sport-dramas, function and feel as if they fit into these genres - not others - then this is what they follow; a birth, death and then a re-birth of the classical hero.
Dangal, much like Rocky, much like The Karate Kid, follows this structure, but with a specific emphasis. Better than any of the Karate Kid films, Dangal embodies an idea of reason. And thus the student-mentor relationship in this narrative is so much stronger than that between Miyagi and any of his students. Completely understanding both the structure of a sport-drama and the reason why they work, director Tiwari focuses his narrative on the theme of greater purpose. In such, watching Dangal, it is understood that this is not about a series of wrestling matches. Instead, this is about one woman representing herself, her father, her family, her town, her country and young girls across India and South-East Asia. All sport-dramas capitalise on this to different degrees. So, whilst Dangal is only a few notches below showing one person fight for the whole of humanity, a film such as Rocky is centred on a much tighter family circle. However, almost as evocative and power as the best of the Rocky films, Dangal uses this relationship between the individual and the greater collective to project, without falter, an idea of "It's who you fight for". Some shy away from, or dislike, this kind of narrative as it brings with it a heavy sense of national and personal pride, but there is no real malice or contempt that finds its way into this narrative, just emphatic rejoice.
To conclude, Dangal is such a powerful movie thanks to Aamir Khan's phenomenal embodiment of the anti-hero father and coach, glistening comedy, strong verisimilitude, perfect structuring, a focused script and some text-book direction. Whilst there was a controversy surrounding this movie concerning Khan and his sense of nationhood when it first came out, Dangal is an incredible film whose virtues are deeply embedded in national and familial pride. This is not a movie that anyone should be missing. To end, have you seen Dangal? What are your thoughts?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #32
Next post:
Pom Poko - Whimsical Deception
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
Unable to fulfil his own dreams of winning a gold medal for his country, a father attempts to turn his daughters into world-class wrestlers.
Dangal is a sensational sports epic grounded in emotional enormity. Following an ex-wrestlter, Mahavir Singh Phogat, who trains his two daughters, Geeta and Babita, to be wrestling champions, this is a loose biopic of the Phogat family. The Phogat sisters, of which there are six, are famous throughout India as wrestling champions at various levels of achievement. However, following the oldest sister, Dangal is less a biopic of the whole family and more of a sports drama about a rather confined father-daughter relationship.
Whilst this film is almost completely faultless, critique can be made on the way in which this 'biopic' is framed. Instead of depicting the whole family, or even just the two eldest as is intermittently implied throughout, Dangal has some peripheral discord about it. In such, anyone who has siblings or children will instantly sense a strong sentiment of favouritism both in the characterisation of the main figures and in the framing of the narrative. Unfortunately, this leaves you with a subtle sense of disappointment when you realised that the second oldest sister is just as accomplished as her older sibling. And, whilst this only manifests itself throughout the narrative in the form of curiosity - in wanting to know more about the younger sister - with the end, it certainly feels like we are cheated out of a fuller, fairer story.
Looking past these ethical issues of structure and framing, it is, however, very hard to critique Dangal from a technical and experiential perspective. Whilst it is possible to point to the obviously Disney-fied and clearly constructed story, I struggle to see that kind of critique as particularly relevant or pertinent.
Formula is certainly the sport-drama's friend. If we look the most iconic examples of the genre - the Rocky and Karate Kid films - we see that they work very comfortably within the realms of predictability. We do find sports-dramas that operate outside of these bounds, Million Dollar Baby and The Wrestler for example, but they're structured as straight dramas with sports as a side-note. This begins to imply the fact that sport-dramas are very much so like adventures; we all know how they must go, and thus predictability is a key convention, leaving the art of the adventure to be its framing, world building a character population. When films attempt to subvert traditional structures of sport-dramas, they then cease to signify the genre - and such is true of adventure films; just sending a character out into the world isn't really enough to qualify an 'adventure film'. In fact, we can understand the sport-drama to be a microcosm of the adventure. Classical adventures follow the hero's journey structure of the departure, the initiation and the return. There are further substructures of this narrative form, and their specification will lead us down a rabbit hole of debate, so we won't go into them. However, when adventure films, much like sport-dramas, function and feel as if they fit into these genres - not others - then this is what they follow; a birth, death and then a re-birth of the classical hero.
Dangal, much like Rocky, much like The Karate Kid, follows this structure, but with a specific emphasis. Better than any of the Karate Kid films, Dangal embodies an idea of reason. And thus the student-mentor relationship in this narrative is so much stronger than that between Miyagi and any of his students. Completely understanding both the structure of a sport-drama and the reason why they work, director Tiwari focuses his narrative on the theme of greater purpose. In such, watching Dangal, it is understood that this is not about a series of wrestling matches. Instead, this is about one woman representing herself, her father, her family, her town, her country and young girls across India and South-East Asia. All sport-dramas capitalise on this to different degrees. So, whilst Dangal is only a few notches below showing one person fight for the whole of humanity, a film such as Rocky is centred on a much tighter family circle. However, almost as evocative and power as the best of the Rocky films, Dangal uses this relationship between the individual and the greater collective to project, without falter, an idea of "It's who you fight for". Some shy away from, or dislike, this kind of narrative as it brings with it a heavy sense of national and personal pride, but there is no real malice or contempt that finds its way into this narrative, just emphatic rejoice.
To conclude, Dangal is such a powerful movie thanks to Aamir Khan's phenomenal embodiment of the anti-hero father and coach, glistening comedy, strong verisimilitude, perfect structuring, a focused script and some text-book direction. Whilst there was a controversy surrounding this movie concerning Khan and his sense of nationhood when it first came out, Dangal is an incredible film whose virtues are deeply embedded in national and familial pride. This is not a movie that anyone should be missing. To end, have you seen Dangal? What are your thoughts?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #32
Next post:
Pom Poko - Whimsical Deception
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
