Shabaash Srijit, Shabaash Taapsee, this is a biopic that dares to dream

For all its flaws, some quite glaring, Srijit Mukherjee ’s Shabaash Mithu the biopic of cricketer Mithali Raj , comes across as a strong piece of cinema, buoyed by a script that is not in awe of its subject. Not that there is any lack of empathy. But director Srijit Mukherjee never overturns his objectivity for the sake of adulation.

The larger question—why are women cricketers regarded as second citizens on the field?—looms large over every frame, sometimes right up there when Mithali stands being heckled by her own teammates. Or when her grandmother blatantly favours Mithali’s brother. Of course, they all come around eventually. That is the way the sports genre works.

While Srijit wants to remain true to his protagonist’s journey he also wants to stay faithful to the tropes of the sports genre.There is nothing new here. Even the theme of a woman trying to crack a men’s sport has been done recently by Kangana Ranaut , and very ably at that, in Panga .

If it’s a man’s domain there will be a comment on toilets for women. Remember Gunjan Saxena ? Here in this light-in-tone dark-in-intent bio-pic, we have a sequence where the women cricketers on a bus trip, pause in the fields for a pee, squatting in broad daylight, as there is no other option available.

Shabaash Mithu takes time to warm up to Mithali Raj and her sullen team’s predicament. For some time the girls follow the routine sports tropes: resenting the outsider, making Mithali feels like a fresher in college. This bullying, a.k.a ragging, is shown to be some kind of a precursor to buddy bonding. This shouldn’t be. I would have expected a filmmaker of Srijit Mukherjee to dig deeper into Mithali Raj’s subconscious to gather the depths of her hurt at being discriminated against.

Gender bias starts young. But then, there is also the liberal male sprinkled generously across the screenplay to counter the sardonicism of patriarchal bullies like Brijendra Kala, the chairperson of the Committee who cricket-shames Mithali, or that drunken bloke in the pub at the climax who tells the bartender to switch channels to Fashion TV when the Indian women’s cricket team is playing in England. Because, well, cricket is for men.

Yes, the screenplay is filled with stereotypical characters and situations, including the heroine’s supportive father, played by Sameer Dharamadhikari with the same volume of warmth and parental empathy as Pankaj Tripathi in Gunjan Saxena. And what about the father-like stern but tender coach? Vijay Raaz in Shabaash Mithu could be Pankaj Kapur in Jersey .

For all its sins of crowd-fronting, this film has the backbone needed to take all the clichés in its stride. Some of the sequences are so brilliantly written, like the one where Mithali and her cricket colleagues barge into a colleague Neelu Paswan (an excellent Sampa Mandal)’s wedding and meet the bridegroom who is all for his wife batting after marriage, some may wonder why the entire film couldn’t be just as cheeky in tone.

Shabaash Mithu is a beehive of acting excellence. But the real scene stealer is little Inayat Verma (as the child Mithali) who stole every scene from Abhishek Bachchan in Ludo . And he knew it. In Lion, little Sunny Pawar was better than Dev Patel as his younger version.

In Shabaash Mithu, Inayat is better as the child Mithali Raj than Tapsee as the grownup, and I am sure Taapsee will agree.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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