PAAN SINGH TOMAR: MOVIE REVIEW

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Cast: Irrfan, Mahie Gill, Zakir Hussain, Vipin SharmaDirector: Tigmanshu Dhulia Runtime: 135 min.Verdict: It’s like McChicken Burger Combo (fries and Coke).Super tasty and mostly without nutrition. Genre: Drama, Crime, Action
                Mr.Dhulia’s film is a little too eager, the frames a little too resolved. There’sprecious little by way of moral tension here, and the events arrive with theinner equations already settled. One might not be entirely mistaken in thinkingof it more as a package and less the life of an unsung hero. The army is almostuntouchable, considering they defend us and stuff, and one cannot even begin toimagine a film where the army is the one against whom the fingers have beenpointed. Hey, in Mr. Dhulia’s defense he does wink a little in its generaldirection, but that is the extent of it. Still, I respect the effort. The cops,and hence the rest of the establishment have to bear the brunt of Mr. Dhulia’sallegations, and in the light of the recent events down-under, even the BCCI mightnot have been left out. The cops here come in two varieties – (a) overweight andcorrupt, and (b) overweight and gratuitous dacoit-hunter. Exhibit (a) isirredeemable and worthless, and I’ve come across such depictions so many timesI am numb. So yeah, I don’t necessarily mind them. But exhibit (b)? Now, thatgets to me. And it fits Ms. Arundhati Roy’s description of our government.Often they are one and the same thing. Rathore (Mr. Hussain) is their representative, introduced to usvia a point-blank range bham-bham. You know, like bad-ass. The thing with him,and with this bunch for that matter, is that they hunt in battalions. I do notwant to second guess Mr. Dhulia’s intentions here, the arm of the law comesacross as some sort of bully, effective only when working in significantnumbers, and even then hardly a match to the pure awesomeness of the rebel’sresourcefulness. And individuality, of course. I mean, a classic David andGoliath situation. It’s natural I am reminded of Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, a film that doesn’tpursue the self-righteousness that Mr. Dhulia’s film so aggressively does, anda film where the law respects the domesticity of the common man. Sure, PaanSingh (Mr. Irrfan) does approach a couple of folks, a collector and aninspector, and the lack of eagerness on their part betrays the film’s lack ofinterest in trying to give the authority a chance, and for the most part thesesequences come across as pre-packaged. These scenes, couple of them, or maybeeven three, with a cop, with an army-man, and with a collector involve littleby way of development and more by way of obligation. I might be painfully naïveout here but not a single lawman here expresses any sort of respect, and onefeels, or at least I felt, Mr. Dhulia was a little too eager to get to the spicyrebel part. Now, that might not necessarily be a turn-off for you, dear reader,but then if one of your film’s opening line takes the corruption of theparliament for a fact and then proceeds to show how the authority has failed acitizen, I don’t know how much I ought to gain by way of insight or observationor a political statement. So yeah, PaanSingh Tomar comes with all its equations preprocessed, and all we’resupposed to do is applaud as the system gets pwned. Which is fine. There’re some terrific dialogs here, some of thebest I can recollect, and the dialect runs so deep we had English subtitles forassistance. The races are fun enough, and Mr. Dhulia’s insistence to pick up aruler and a compass and draw parallels in real life are not. In fact, the film’scentral structure of a flashback (past) derived out of Paan Singh’s dictationof his life-story, where he’s completely in command of the themes that governhis life, bring another level of dilution, so that all we’re left with is preprocessedand even pre-chewed food. It’s just completely passive, and I wouldn’t necessarilycomplain considering that Mr. Irrfan at work is one of the great pleasures ofmovie-watching. But then, yeah, it’s a whole lot of one-way traffic. Too muchof us versus them. Paan Singh and his men kill 9 villagers and the events arestacked to highlight the betrayal. The villagers aren’t supporting the law, andare only choosing a side for personal gains – a job for a tip. Which is sort ofdepressing, in a way. Utter selfishness and crookedness (generally a reflectionof physical fitness) and absolute lack of principal surrounding our man. He’sleft alone at the end, as he was always in his life – in the field, in thearmy, in his village – and this moral preciousness is a little hard to swallow.Art (and sport) has a way of being obsessed with the past, and commerce has away of always being in the present. One could argue the late Paan Singh didn’t dowhat is necessary to be heralded thecountry’s hero, no? You win a gold medal, and you win spelling bee, and you wina science contest. And then you win the Cricket World Cup. If all of theseachievements were one and the same, well, I don’t know, I would’ve lost countof heroes to follow. I mean, can one really be a hero, or define a heroic act(art), without selling it as one (commerce)? Isn’t that balance, and isn’t itthe case that Paan Singh probably wasn’t a hero until Mr. Dhulia’s film madehim one. Which is how it ought to be, if you were to ask me. The hero is on thescreen. And to gripe about either – art or commerce, past or present – and especiallythe latter is probably guilty of seeking self-satisfaction. You know, feelinggood about it. Which Paan Singh Tomar is.It’s heartfelt, but with design. An old lady gets to feel the weight of rifle-butt.Completely hardcore world out there. A world where the one human touch isprovided by an Army officer to Paan Singh in the form of an ice-cream. And I wouldbe lying to you if I were to say that ice-cream doesn’t taste a little bitter.