Mary Kom: Priyanka Chopra doesn't look Manipuri but she can fight

Two years after Mary Kom’s medal-winning performance at the Summer Olympics, the trailer of the biopic titled Mary Kom was launched. Directed by Omung Kumar, produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (who has, incidentally, edited the trailer) and starring Priyanka Chopra, Mary Kom is Bollywood’s ode… to what? Let’s take a look at the trailer to figure that out.

Is this a film that would have you do a Mexican wave in support of girl power? Absolutely. Is it a film that is faithful to the story of a woman athlete from North East India? Not by a long shot. Mary Kom begins with people knocking Mary (Chopra) down, literally and verbally. Her father doesn’t want her to be a boxer. Boys on the street make snide remarks about her being Muhammad Ali. But Mary’s coach thinks she’s got potential and she can, from the look of things, float like a feather to the floor of the boxing ring when she’s being knocked out. That’s not the end of her talents though. When “Coach Sir” (Sunil Thapa) takes her on as a student, to be a “phiter”, she trains feverishly. Quickly, she becomes good enough to beat the crap out of men bigger than her in street fights. Just in case you thought she’s all about fighting, she can also cook and giggle while flirting with a dude (the one she’ll marry. Because she’s a good girl and all that). [caption id=“attachment_1630937” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] A latest poster of Mary Kom.[/caption] The married Mary is happy, but her coach’s voice growls at her in a voiceover. He berates her for giving up her boxing career after just one big win. Not so fast, Coach Sir. Mary’s father may be burning her gloves but that’s just fuel to her fiery ambition. Fortunately, her husband understands and so off Mary goes, to find the most picturesque locations in which she can do things like raise massive tyres and defy gravity. Because that’s how you train to become a boxer when you’re in Manipur. People doubt Mary constantly. Can she be an athlete and a mother? Can a girl born to a farmer in a tiny village in Manipur become a world champion? Can she look fierce with a bald pate? Yes, yes and yes. Can Chopra look Manipuri though? No. Wrapped in the 2 minutes 54 seconds of the Mary Kom trailer are attempts to tick a number of boxes. Girl power: check. Underdog is hero: check. Bollywood star looking fully heroic: check. Women’s empowerment: check. Unfortunately, there’s one box that doesn’t get checked — the one for authenticity. At one point in the trailer, Mary throws a chair at a podium and, with tears in her eyes, yells, “I am an Indian! India mera dil mein hai!” (India is in my heart.) You may wonder why she’s saying this because being Indian is not just in her heart but also quite obviously on her face too; and in her Hindi accent. Kom’s Manipuri identity was something that proved to be an obstacle for her on occasion, and given how she’s widely celebrated now as a national hero, she clearly overcame that hurdle in style. That’s a story that we won’t be hearing in Kumar’s Mary Kom. A lot has been said of Chopra having trained extensively to match Kom’s physique and the make-up in the film. However, it turns out that the muscles and beefiness in the film’s posters are the product of Photoshop, not a training regimen. It doesn’t look like the always-fit Chopra has bulked up for the role. She does, however, do a mean job of practicing her punches. Chopra is also the most Bambi-eyed Manipuri anyone’s ever seen and the film tries to justify this by casting an actor with conventionally Indian features — no slant eyes, no flat nose — as Mary’s father. You’d think that this would lead to more people picking on her for not looking Manipuri as a young girl and Mary fitting in fine when she’s out of the state. Despite the “karega” and “fighter” that Chopra sputters in an effort to pretend she’s unfamiliar with Hindi, the actor is totally fluent in the language when it’s an emotional or dramatic moment. For instance, the trailer ends with a crackling dialogue by Mary: “Kabhi kisiko itna bhi mat darao ke dar hi khatam ho jaay,” she says to someone who’s threatened to end her boxing career. (“Don’t scare someone so much that it ends their ability to feel fear.”) Chopra says the “kh” in “khatam” with just the necessary roughness. Because hey, this is Priyanka Chopra being a Bollywood hero. She’s got to sound right, and by right we don’t mean authentically Manipuri but matching what Hindi-speaking audiences expect of a hero. It makes the other parts, where she’s faking bad Hindi, sound ridiculous and a little caricaturish. Omung Kumar’s film is “inspired by” Kom’s life, but from the look of things, Mary Kom is all set to be yet another Bollywood biopic that takes unintelligent liberties (like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag did, for instance) in the hope of scoring a blockbuster. On the plus side, it looks like the masala and glycerine that Bollywood fans like to see in movies is all there in Mary Kom,  so maybe the raw ingredients of a hit are in here in spite of all the things the film has got wrong. Mary Kom releases on 5th September, 2014. Mary Kom has been produced by Viacom18 which also owns Firstpost.