Release date:
|
August 5, 2016
|
Director:
|
Soumendra Padhi
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Manoj Bajpayee,
Mayur Mahendra Patole, Tillotama Shome, Shruti Marathe, Gajraj Rao, Chhaya
Kadam
Hindi
|
CAUTION: VERY LONG REVIEW AHEAD
Budhia Singh – Born To Run is notable for
many reasons. It puts the national spotlight back on wonderkid Budhia Singh who
gained global attention in 2005-06 for running marathons at a very young age,
culminating in a 65 km non-stop run from Bhubaneshwar to Puri in seven hours and
two minutes when he was just four years old. It features an engaging performance
by Manoj Bajpayee as Budhia’s coach, the late Biranchi Das, just months after Bajpayee’s
riveting turn as a gay man victimised for his sexual orientation in Hansal
Mehta’s Aligarh. And it stars an
incredibly cute child called Mayur Mahendra Patole as Budhia.
Sadly, the film is
notable for troubling reasons too.
Born To Run unwittingly highlights our national penchant for
propaganda over facts, noise over news and our rampant, casual disregard for
rules. It does so by circumventing uncomfortable questions about the ethics of training
a little child so rigorously for marathons, even while making a show of addressing
those questions. And it does this in an evident bid to project its protagonist
as a positive figure, even while seeming to paint him in shades of grey. That
protagonist, by the way, is Biranchi not Budhia, despite what the title
indicates.
The fact is the
film did not need to do any of this to build up Biranchi as a worthy hero. Media
accounts of the coach (who was murdered in 2008) suggest that there was much to
admire in him, just as there was much to question. More on that later in this
review.
Writer-director
Soumendra Padhi’s Budhia Singh – Born To
Run, earlier titled Duronto, is
based on the story of Bhubaneshwar boy Budhia who was sold by his
poverty-stricken mother for Rs 800. His ‘owner’ ill-treats him. Biranchi – a
local judo coach and philanthropist – rescues Budhia, and brings the boy to an orphanage
that he (Biranchi) runs with his wife Gita.
One day, as punishment
for some mischief, Biranchi orders Budhia to run around the orphanage compound until
he is told to stop. The coach goes off on work, forgetting about the stricture.
Much to his chagrin when he returns many hours later, Budhia is still running.
Amazed at such physical strength and endurance in one so young, Biranchi sees in
the child a future Olympian marathoner, and begins training him. When Budhia’s
ability to run great lengths gets media coverage, Odisha’s child welfare officials
intervene, pointing out that running marathons at that age is harmful. Biranchi
is undeterred. Budhia is ultimately taken away from him, banned from running marathons and kept in a
government hostel where he still lives.
Born To Run is an account of Biranchi’s association with
Budhia. The skeletal plotline of the film provided in the above two
paragraphs is supported by archival news coverage.
The film has a lot
going in its favour in addition to its fascinating subject and endearing
central cast. Odisha is a scenic state rarely visited by Bollywood. While exploring
these relatively fresh pastures for his audience, DoP Manoj Kumar Khatoi delivers
enough picturesque frames to give us an idea of what the Hindi film industry is
missing, taking us past pretty country roads, bridges and brooks in areas where
Biranchi trains Budhia, perhaps on the outskirts of their home city.
Born To Run jogs along at a
pleasant pace, a result of Padhi’s easy directorial style, his writing (the
screenplay and dialogues are both credited to him) and editor Shivkumar
Panicker’s firm hand. The film’s various running events are well put together,
and effectively draw the viewer in with smart editing, Subash Sahoo’s sound
design and the never-intrusive background score.
It is a relief that
the cast has not been asked to ‘do’ Oriya accents. Considering that stars
trying accents usually end up faltering (case in point: Salman Khan in Sultan, rare exception: Konkona Sen
Sharma in Mr & Mrs Iyer) or
caricaturing the community to which their character belongs, this really is the best way to go.
The interactions
between the children at the orphanage – all such spontaneous actors – play out smoothly.
Bajpayee and Patole share a warm chemistry. And Marathi-Tamil actress Shruti
Marathe is immensely watchable in the role of Biranchi’s wife Gita (although
her issues with her husband are, like too much else in the film, left hanging
in mid-air and not fully examined).
It would be wrong
to allow Born To Run’s pluses to lull
us into an acceptance of its evasiveness on crucial ethical issues. It is one
thing to be a non-judgmental filmmaker leaving the audience to decide whose
side they are on, but quite another to avoid laying out all the facts before
the public to let them arrive at an informed conclusion. It is also not very
honourable to employ subtle means throughout the film to, in effect, lobby for
Biranchi. After all, in a case such as this one, the well-being of the child in
question is what is of paramount importance.
Note how Odisha’s
Child Welfare Minister Mahashweta Malik (a thinly veiled allusion to the
state’s then Minister
for Women and Child Welfare, Pramila Mullick) has
been styled and performed by Chhaya Kadam as a churlish, emotionless,
stereotypical schoolmarm. Note too Gajraj Rao’s sliminess as the Chairman of
the state’s Child Welfare Committee and Malik’s ally in the clash with
Biranchi. The film here taps into the average Indian’s visceral dislike and distrust of politicians
and bureaucrats. What choice do these two have in a battle for viewers’ hearts
when the full force of Bajpayee and Patole’s charms are simultaneously
unleashed on us?
The film shows
these unlikeable characters raising questions about Biranchi’s methods and the
inappropriateness of training a three/four-year-old for marathons; it delivers
passing expressions of concern from others whose questions are addressed firmly
by Biranchi and not countered; it implies that Budhia and Biranchi were victims
of political games rather than legitimate concerns (the reality was perhaps a
combination of both); and it does not mention
globally accepted norms or rules on this front. A foreign journalist in the
film asks the Minister if the law is on her side, but the question is just left
dangling there. Why?
Here is what Budhia Singh – Born To Run should have told
us:
According to media articles
from a decade back, in 2005 – that is, even before he had turned four – Budhia’s
training regimen included seven hours of non-stop running each morning,
followed by a break and then more running. Assuming that he was being given a
weekly off from training, and that he just did one hour after his break, that
would still be eight hours a day and 48 hours a week. Budhia had reportedly run 48 marathons by
the time he turned four.
The internationally
accepted distance for marathons has been 42.195 km since 1920, as per the Olympic
Studies Centre of The International Olympic Committee. This means Budhia’s highly
publicised 65 km run from Bhubaneshwar to Puri was about 23km above the
standard.
No doubt then, he
was naturally gifted. Question is: was it in his best interests to explore that
gift as a virtual toddler, and how acceptable were the training techniques used?
A medical manual
published by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 2012
recommends 3 km as the maximum competition distance for children below nine
years, and further recommends that marathons be run only after the age of 18. The
document advocates not more than 6 km as the weekly training distance
in the
case of an under-nine-year-old – 6 km in an entire week, not the 48 or more
that Budhia was doing while he trained under Biranchi.
The Athletics Federation of India
is affiliated to IAAF. Even if IAAF norms were more relaxed in 2005-06 than
they were in 2012 when this manual was published, it can be safely assumed that
they were nowhere close to what Budhia’s body was being subjected to by a
possibly well-meaning but misguided, misinformed coach. A good indicator of
this comes from a 1987 policy statement
of the Australian Sports
Medicine Federation’s Children in Sport Committee
published on the IAAF website, which
recommends marathons only for above-18-year-olds, a maximum competition
distance of 5 miles (approximately 8 km) for children below 12, and a weekly maximum
training distance of 24 km. Budhia was running double this distance per week almost
20 years later at the age of three-four, at a time when sports federations worldwide
were becoming more – not less – stringent than they were in 1987.
In an ideal world, a film critic
should not require a calculator and medical documents while writing reviews. This
is knowledge we should have gleaned from Born
To Run.
And here is a response to the predictable counter: it is true that this is not
a documentary, but it is just as true that feature films are capable of conveying
facts without charts and Powerpoint presentations.
If a coach was ignoring
international norms for a three-four year
old, it should not have mattered to the filmmaker that the man had plucked that
child out of obscurity and penury, it should not have mattered that he gave the
child a comfortable home. If you help someone to escape poverty, you do not
automatically buy the right to exploit them. As viewers we cannot allow
ourselves to be blinded to the truth by Manoj Bajpayee’s charisma, Mayur Mahendra Patole’s sweetness, our contempt for netas and babus or our bitter experiences with government red tape.
Two things matter: first,
Budhia’s physique and psyche may well have been damaged due to Biranchi’s
training; second, this film glosses over that possibility, instead making a diligent
effort to earn public sympathy for Biranchi all these years later by drawing on
our collective disillusionment with government. The film is designed to get us
to believe Biranchi and doubt his sarkari
detractors. And no, it is not enough that an opening disclaimer describes Born To Run as a fictionalised version
of true events.
It is not as of
Biranchi’s work with Budhia was intended as a protest against what he
considered unreasonable Indian or international ethical norms. He was no Gandhi
on the way to Dandi. It is evident from his interviews to reporters and even
from this film that he either did not know what those norms were or did not
care. The film reminds us that Biranchi wanted the child to win India a medal
in the 2016 Olympics. Fact: Budhia is still not eligible to run an Olympic
marathon and even if the Odisha government had nurtured his talent, he could
not have run at Rio 2016.
The world is not
fuelled by our misplaced patriotic support for Budhia’s right to run in the
Olympics and officially recognised marathons in India or our frustration with
Indian officialdom. The ongoing Rio Olympics 2016 has an age limit for the marathon event,
as did the 2012 Olympics: under-20s are not allowed. Budhia is still just 14.
So yes, the Odisha
government should have got experts to assess his talent, they should have
planned his future accordingly and it is unforgivable if they have not done so.
Budhia has been quoted in DNA newspaper
this week saying he
has spent the past 10 years “in a sports hostel training for marathons”, but Padhi has said elsewhere that Budhia is being trained for sprints.
Either
way, our anger against trademark sarkari callousness cannot translate
into a disinterest in facts.
It would be
inexcusable enough if it turns out that Soumendra Padhi made an entire film on Biranchi’s
dream for Budhia without knowing global norms for marathons and medical guidelines
for children in athletics. What would be worse though is if we discover that he
knew, but chose to keep his viewers in the dark.
Has Padhi used our
ignorance to manipulate us into rooting for a debatable hero, in a bid to draw
us to his film? Or are broad brushstrokes just easier to write than nuanced
arguments?
The film fails to
mention that Odisha’s Department of Women and Child Welfare was not the only
statutory body worried about Budhia’s well-being, and that the National Human Rights Commission had asked them to intervene after Budhia collapsed at the end
of his (in)famous Bhubaneshwar-Puri run. The text flashing on screen at the end
of this film claims that many in Odisha feel there was a larger conspiracy
behind Biranchi’s murder than was ever revealed, thus gently nudging us to
consider that anti-Budhia interests were at play. It fails to add what media
reports from back then reveal: that Biranchi was killed by a gangster allegedly for helping a model who was being stalked by that gangster.
It goes without
saying that such a man is worthy of a biopic and Padhi need
not have worked so hard to elevate Budhia’s mentor in our eyes. Even in the matter of
Budhia, even among cynics, there were those who had kind words for Biranchi. Here is a helpful extract from a 2011 article on cnn.com about Gemma
Atwal, whose multiple-award-winning documentary Marathon Boy follows Budhia from 2005-2010:
Atwal said she doesn’t question Das’ benevolence. The children
he rescued, she said, were the love of his life. But his love of children “was
eclipsed by his dream of finding a sport champion among them,” she said.
Given all its
positives, Budhia Singh – Born To Run could
have been a great film if only Padhi had not been chary of highlighting his chosen
protagonist’s warts along with his virtues. The fate of the
evidently talented Budhia is a tale crying out to be told in a country
shamefully short on sporting excellence. But it is unacceptable that the film
does not state in black and white that Biranchi was wrong to tax a three-four
year old child’s body in the way he did. This is not debatable, as Born To Run suggests. This is a
fact.
The fact is too that the
truth about Biranchi, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is a story worth
telling.
Rating
(out of five): **
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U
|
Running time:
|
111 minutes 22 seconds
|
No comments:
Post a Comment