Dangal is Disney meets Bollywood and brings girl power to the conventional underdog sports genre. Dangal, which translates to wrestling, is a biographical film about an amateur wrestler, played by Aamir Khan, who decides to teach his daughters how to wrestle, and the Phogat sisters, who became the first Indian female wrestlers to win gold and silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Dangal is a family friendly film.
The first half of Dangal is dominated by the father who is obsessed with wrestling and is devastated that he has no sons to pass the tradition to until he realizes that “gold is gold,” and his daughters are made of sterner stuff than he originally believed. Dangal recognizes that the father is not necessarily healthy for forcing his daughters to live his unfulfilled dreams and for automatically categorizing female gender norms as antithetical to being a successful wrestler, but his negatives are outweighed by his brand of militant feminist mentorship. He wants his girls to be able to physically beat boys and be aggressive like a tiger, not passive, which was reminiscent of themes explored in Queen of Katwe, another Disney production.
This portion of Dangal occasionally tackles the condoned sexual exploitation of young girls by showing how the male crowd reacts to a flat chested, fully clothed girl during local wrestling matches with boys. They acted as if she was auditioning for Showgirls. Dangal also has a preachy afterschool moment when a young child bride admonishes the Phogat sisters to appreciate their father because they could be like her. Dangal is still hella patriarchal, and unfortunately Dangal is uninterested in a happy medium between being sold to the highest bidder and a life of stark devotion to a sport that one is uninterested in.
The second half of Dangal shifts to the older daughter, Zeeta, who must adjust to being independent and to the national world of wrestling. Zeeta is like most teenagers-she believes that she knows better than her father, rebels by being more femme and adopting the techniques of her coach, who is more of a bureaucrat and does not have the passion of a champion. The coach is a symbol of the greater corruption within the Indian sports community, which the father only alluded to, but largely remained unseen. Unfortunately she fails to thrive in this environment and begins to doubt that she has what it takes to become a champion. This half was reminiscent, but way stronger than Pele regarding themes of national pride and distinguishing oneself from prevailing notions of how one should perform to become a champion. She humbly and secretly returns to her father’s tutelage, which leads to victory.
Dangal wisely creates a situation that makes Geeta’s victory her own and not a function of her father’s expertise. Geeta finally chooses what to do and how to fight independent from her father and becomes an autonomous individual. When she shows gratitude in a momentous gesture at the medal ceremony, it is in contrast to her earlier childish and shaming attempts at independence. Her gratitude is a sign of her maturity and autonomy as a champion and an independent individual from her father.
If you are concerned that Dangal is more wrestling than you are prepared to see for 2 hours and 41 minutes, rest assured that even a sports atheist such as myself found the entire feature riveting and was able to follow the rules of the sport. Dangal does an effective job of giving a brief tutorial on how you get points in wrestling. The wrestling matches were really well done, and I could perceive the strategy and acrobatic athleticism as opposed to brute strength necessary to be a champion wrestler. The songs echo the story that unfolds on the screen and inflect the training montages with the emotion of the participants. The opening scenes of Dangal also highlight the clever pairing of audio with the characters’ actions when the father engages in a wrestling match while sports commentators discuss a match that the audience never sees, but seems equally applicable to the father’s activities.
I have seen Indian foreign films before, but not many. Before Dangal, in 1994, I only saw one Indian movie in theaters: The Bandit Queen, which was banned in India in theaters in 1994 and was an unintentional parenting fail because there was a graphic excruciating gang rape scene. Even though I was an adult by then, The Bandit Queen was fairly traumatizing. Whenever I see a foreign film, regardless of the film’s country of origin, I am usually in a theater surrounded by Americans until Dangal. Dangal was the first foreign film that I saw where film’s audience was the filmmaker’s intended audience. The majority of the audience was filled with either Indian immigrants or their American born descendants, which was a really awesome experience. For example, if the audience laughed, and I did not get the joke, it still helped me to interpret the film’s overall message.
Dangal depicted the Australian white wrestler as the villain, an enormous towering brute that dwarfed Geeta. Dangal shows wrestling as a symbolic, but continuing battle against colonialism. Dangal begins with a bunch of half naked, brown, built Indian guys at the beginning of the film, and honestly as a moviegoer, I rarely see more than one, if I am lucky, fine brown man on screen. I did wonder if color prejudice played a role in the daughters’ casting because they were seemed lighter than the actors who played their parents.
Dangal is the first time that I have seen Khan’s work, but he killed his role. His wordless physical performance was outstanding. For instance, whenever he could not stand with pride (it only happens three times in Dangal), it hurt my soul. He just dominated the screen and kept the momentum going.
Dangal may be a conventional film that reinforces piety and unquestioning obedience to one’s father, but it also aggressively challenges gender norms and has a father who expects them to turn the tables when they enter the real world by choosing the man and encouraging them to get down and dirty when fighting. As the second highest grossing Indian film ever released to date, Dangal is an entertaining must see introduction for audiences who would like to dip a toe into Indian films.