MANJHI: THE MOUNTAIN MAN (U)
Director: Ketan Mehta
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Pankaj Tripathi
Running time: 124 minutes

Gulliver used to be referred to as the “Man-Mountain” by the Lilliputians. Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s performance as the Mountain Man in Manjhi makes other actors of his generation look like Lilliputs. Also, and unfortunately, it makes the film’s script, director and co-actors look undeserving of his brilliance.

Manjhi is arguably Ketan Mehta’s best film in a long, long time and yet it cannot hold a hammer or a chisel to Nawaz’s masterclass in acting. The film is like a constant battle between a terrific performance and a tedious and almost formulaic script and treatment.

Nawaz plays Dashrath Manjhi, the man who had given “build your own path” a whole new meaning by hammering away at a 360ft long, 30ft wide and 25ft high mountain from 1960 to 1982 to carve out a road between Gehlaur and Wazirganj in Gaya, cutting down the distance from 55km to 15km.

Why did he do that? Because his wife had slipped and fallen from the mountain while bringing food for him and then there was not enough time to cross the mountain and make the 55km journey to seek medical help and save her. Dashrath took it to heart and decided to split that hillock wide open. All by himself.

A man chipping away at a mountain single-handedly for 22 years is unfilmable on paper. Why on paper? Check out the painstakingly boring Films Division documentary on Dashrath Manjhi, The Man Who Moved the Mountain. Mehta is smart enough to cut back and forth between the mountain-breaking and Dashrath’s love story with wife Phaguniya (Radhika Apte) which triggered the obsession.

Now, besides the passion-puffed brushstrokes — mud is the rang and ras here with a lot of mud-slinging and mud-cleaning on not-so-bare bodies — the love story (“some of the personal situations are fictionalised”) is shown as comic, almost slapstick. But it’s not just about making your gawaar hero wear yellow shirt and red pants. Mehta clearly doesn’t have the lightness of touch to handle such a cutesy rom-com track.

It’s the scenes between the man and the mountain which keep Manjhi afloat. If breaking a mountain wasn’t tough enough, Dashrath has to deal with drought, politics of the region, the forest department and even poisonous snakes. And so if Aron Ralston had to cut his arm off (in 127 Hours), the Gehlaur guy had to chop off his venom-ripped toe.

Yet the man never became a national hero in real life and Nawaz makes sure that he doesn’t turn Dashrath into one in the film. He plays the “pahaadkatiya” as an ordinary man who initially wants to get back at the mountain for killing his wife and then becomes obsessed with his road-carving mission. It’s his performance that humanises rocks and stones into an enemy first and then a friend and then almost a muse. You have to see him to believe it!

Radhika as the wife is alright, a tad overawed by the Nawaz show. Tigmanshu Dhulia and Pankaj Tripathi are good as the evil mukhiya and his evil-er son. Look out for Deepa Sahi Mehta’s very special cameo. But the actors playing Dashrath’s father and the journalist who tells his tale are mediocre at best.

A running analogy in the film to Dashrath Manjhi’s mountain breaking is Shah Jahan’s building of the Taj Mahal. Both did what they did for their dear departed wives. One put in his riches to fund an architectural spectacle and the other put in his life, blood and sweat to find a way through the mountain. Even after this film, no one will go looking for Dashrath Manjhi Path in Bihar and yet it’s a bigger wonder, a greater testimony to love. Shaandar! Zabardast! Zindabad!

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is Bolly’s best actor because.... Tell t2@abp.in