Bhaag Tomar Bhaag...

I first met Tigmanshu Dhulia way back in 1998-99 in Mumbai. He had completed his project
with Shekhar Kapur, Bandit Queen. He was the casting director of the film. Now
he was trying to get a foothold in Bollywood. I met him at the Essel Studios. My
actor friends used to call him Tishu Bhai....

Tigmanshu was directing a TV serial then. His briefing of the actors was minute. The soap opera culture had not rubbed on him then, I guess. For that matter it never did. For Tagmanshu was a perfectionist. A writer at heart, he knew his characters inside out. This got reflected in his films. His actors seamlessly merged with the screen characters.

The best example of this I saw in his latest offering, Paan Singh Tomar. The characters
breath life. They seem to be handpicked from the village and the small-town setting. And that is good casting. You never seem to know that the actors have been directed to act. It is natural.
Irrfan seems to have thoroughly internalized the body-language of a sprinter. He has properly toned his body to match that of an athlete. His loose-limbed gait and effortless sprint give an intuitive feel of the character. Tomar’s character-graph is ably sketched.

There is no techno-wizardary of camera or that of editing. Everything is copybook and that dosen’t detract from the narration. The powerful story is riveting enough to not demand the crutches of snazzy edits or camerawork.

The rustic dialogues complete that ‘feel’ of that Chambal ‘look.’ I guess the Bandit Queenesque texture somehow has permeated the film. You wait for the edgy characters to slip into blasphemy, which they don’t. The producers have their agenda neatly cut-out for hemselves. It’s the family audience that they want to bring in. And they have quite succeded in their job

The sports back-story and the rural mileu will go long way in making the film touch the hearts of both the multiplex and the mofussil gentry. You never notice the lack of songs. But you do notice the lack of strong vocal backgrounds like the absence of a few alaaps (आलाप) at the correct places.

The narrative is strong. It goes from scene to scene. And the director ends the
movie when he finishes his storytelling, at the two hour mark. That’s a feat. Proves that Dhulia is a writer at heart. Afterall he has the screenplay of Ratnam’s Dil Se to his credit.

Tomar…proves a point. The age of biopics in Bollywood has arrived. Directors are
experimenting with the right mix of ingredients.

The audience is becoming receptive enough. The next stop for this genre of movie is going to be Rakeysh Om Prakash’s Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.