I like sports
flicks even if they are not game – changers in that rousing genre. The Longest Yard, Remember the Titans, Rush,
Dodgeball, the entire Rocky
franchise and Creed are films I have
watched more times than I care to remember. Million
– Dollar Baby is one of my all-time fave films and it never fails to reduce
me to a miserable puddle of tears. In short, I love sports films, unless they
are made in India. Here people do weird things like cast Priyanka Chopra as
Mary Kom, give Farhan Akhtar a chance to log in a whole lot of gym time to play
Milkha Singh unconvincingly or whoever it was he played in Toofan, etc. Even the critically acclaimed Irudhi Suttru was a
disappointment because I felt it was about a lot of things but the boxing
itself which it was purportedly all about wound up somewhere at the bottom.
Which is why Pa. Ranjith’s Sarpatta
Parambarai was a refreshing change.
After the promise
Ranjith showed with the excellent Madras,
he went on to make the awful Kabali
and Kaala which prompted me to set
the bar really low for Sarpatta
Parambarai but the film, while not lacking in the ideology he cares so much
about and which yields mixed results cinematically speaking, treats the
material with a certain dignity and has such innate respect for the sport of
boxing, you can’t help but be charmed.
Set in the 1970s,
against the backdrop of the emergency, Sarpatta
Parambarai tells an oft told tale of an underdog, Kabilan (Arya), who rises
from the dumps only to fall so that he can rise again. None of this is
groundbreaking, but Ranjith can be counted upon to freshen this stuff up. It helps
that Ranjith always opts to work with a powerhouse cast. Pasupathy, who plays
coach Rangan is just pure dynamite! He conveys so much with his eyes and subtle
use of body language, that it is impossible to take your eyes off him. The man is
a study in understatement! John Vijay who is an Anglo – Indian father figure to
Kabilan is excellent. The supporting cast of boxers - Santhosh Prathap as
Raman, John Kokken as Vembuli and Shabeer Kallarakkal as Dancing Rose are so good,
they easily eclipse Arya who is in his element in the training montages and
inside the ring where he does a decent job of conveying intensity and aggression
but in all the other scenes it is obvious that he is the lightweight among an
impressive array of heavyweights. He is particularly horrendous in a scene
where he has an emotional meltdown and wallows in self-pity. But the good thing
about his character is that he is no saint, and despite his sins, you do root
for him.
Kabilan’s journey
is an impressive one although I found it hard to swallow that a rookie could
take out pros in successive rounds with next to no training. Why do we keep
showing this in our films? It doesn’t happen that way folks. Excellence in
sports takes so much more than talent, aggression or inspiration. Boring things
like endless training, hard work and dedication are called for. A couple of
training montages before a big match is just not going to cut it. Just once, I would
like to see a protagonist who lives, eats, sleeps, breathe his chosen sport
allowing for no distractions. I doubt a project like that would be green – lit but
I daresay it takes just that kind of maniacal commitment to achieve sporting
glory!
Be that as it may,
of course we have to talk about the caste as well as class divide that is
always present felt in Ranjith’s films. There are characters like Thanigan
(Vettai Muthukumar) who would prefer the likes of Kabilan to beg for alms in
front of their homes, shovel up cow dung or slave for them but draw the line at
him going on to represent and win for their Sarpattai clan. His devilry to stop
the progress of Kabilan is reprehensible, unpalatable and in the climatic
stretch, somewhat unconvincing. One wishes Ranjith would temper his passionate
beliefs with just a touch of balanced perspective because ironically, while he
has raised his voice against those who would trod upon the rights of lower
caste members and blue – collar workers, he seems to endorse those boxing clans
like ‘Sarpatta parambarai’, ‘Idiyappa parambarai’ etc. though it is almost a
given that it must be a struggle for aspiring boxers to gain acceptance to
these clans with the inordinate pride some of them take in their identity and
their reluctance to let outsiders in. Sounds familiar? I have always wondered
at the bias displayed by people who raise their voice against bias.
That aside, critics
always rave about the ‘powerful’ women characters in Ranjith’s films but I beg
to differ. Bakkiyam (Anupama Kumar) as Kabilan’s mum, Mariamma (Dushara
Vijayan) his wife and even, Sanchana Natrajan who plays another character’s
wife while solid performers are given nothing to do but scream and berate the
men in their lives in an endless litany. The interminable shrieking is at the
shrillest pitch possible and really grates on the nerves. It is commendable
that these women make the men earn their respect, but I would have appreciated
them more had they gone about it in a less hysterical manner. And I really
wish, that a woman who repeatedly whacks her son with a broomstick isn’t
applauded as ‘feisty’. Abuse is abuse whether it is a man or woman meting it
out and I wish folks would stop treating it like a perfectly acceptable thing.
However, grouses
notwithstanding, Sarpatta Parambarai
has some beautiful moments. I loved that Dancing Rose berates his buddy’s less
than honourable conduct while later bolstering the same fallen comrade by
telling him that there is no shame in a loss if you have fought with honor and
given the best you have got. I misted up at that. Incidentally, he is the only
character who is a decent sport. Everyone else with their mulish clannishness
including the hero would have done better to exalt the sport of boxing more
than their petty rivalries.
Another aside
worthy of a mention is when coach Rangan returns from jail and has a private
moment with his wife, where they exchange a look of heart melting fondness
though they are in the middle of a crowd… Ranjith does his best work when he
brings out these small, intimate moments that establish the bonds shared by his
characters and these triumph over the more epic stretches he stages though they
are effective too. Ultimately, Sarpatta
Parambarai may not quite deliver a knockout punch but it is definitely a
helluva fight!