Saturday, August 18, 2007

Play!

It’s nice.

It’s fairly true to itself.

It’s about girls playing a sport.

And, it’s not about SRK stealing the show.

Chak De. I enjoyed the movie, honestly. The characters are very well etched; the cast is brilliant and honest to their personas. The group of girls – young, fit and real. SRK – mellow, understated and umm…likable.

In my mind, the movie scores over Iqbal. One - because it is not about cricket, it is about hockey. And two - because it is about a team. A team playing together. Cricket, even though there are 11 guys in the team, is still phenomenally individual led – my opinion of course. Especially so in India. Iqbal, was about Iqbal the player. It is always a Tendulkar, or a Dravid, or a Kumble or a Ganguli. Where did we loose the team?

Very often it hits a chord you’re familiar with. India Pakistan matches. Muslim players – playing for us or them? Girls, Women in sports – in India – why bother? The grimy politics of sports, the essential thing that works against sportsmanship. Individual glory versus the team’s goal. But none of these issues are overpowering and work in tandem towards narrating the story. And the winner is, of course, the game. Which is how it always should be.

My favourite part is the girls. Girls playing hockey. It is a pleasure to see Indian women/girls play. There are not enough of us out there – running, skipping, cycling, playing, sweating – fighting, falling, hurting, running again – losing, coming back to play and winning.

We need more of this. We need more of sports.

Long time ago, Nike came out with this commercial. It is so true, and we need it so much here in India. Press Play.



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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that just the last couple of days, at a company conference we were discussing the correspondence between corporate 'teams' and cricket v/s teams like hockey / soccer.

And the point made was pretty much what you are saying: that while they are all 'team' sports, the cricketers tend to be individual 'specialists', where as the players in the other games are relatively more "fungible" in the roles they play. And one of the side-effects of the non-fungibility of cricketers is that it makes them much more individual players, who can still win laurels and be idolised even when their team continues to get thrashed! In the other games, the individual and collective fortunes are much more interlinked.
Does the fact that Indians have produced more 'celebrated' cricketers rather than hockey/soccer players reveal something about us as a nation? An important thought as we move on from 60 years of Independence...

meraj said...

On the movie:
its a good effort sans SRKs hamming skills (he can never better a Swades). in fact, he is back to soundong like Dilip Kumar and the new avataar of Big B.

what really stole my heart was the hockey team...great choice by the director. authentic looking with some excellent performances.

Cricket vs Hockey:
al said and one, Cricket is a batsman's game whereas a game like hockey is pretty much evenly distributed ( a team effort). one of the reasons why Cricket creates individual heroes

ST said...

loved the nike ad -
subtle, yet powerful!