Manjhi: A mountain of duds

In Bihar, they say, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar vacated his seat for two Manjhis - Jitan Ram, who served briefly as the state's chief minister when Kumar quit following the drubbing in the Lok Sabha elections last year; and Dashrath, the Mountain Man. Besides the clever wordplay, this statement illustrates the struggle of both men and their community: in Bihar's political and social geography, fragmented by watertight caste divisions, both were sealed by birth in the lowest strata - Dalit Mushahar, the rat-catchers. Dashrath Manjhi had to cut his way through a hillock to transcend his blighted circumstances. Ketan Mehta's Manjhi: The Mountain Man attempts to pay tribute to the man but watching the film proves to be an uphill task.

The story is now well known. Dashrath, a resident of Gehlaur village in Gaya, vowed to cut a road through a hillock which separated his hamlet from the nearest town after his wife, Fagunia Devi, fell from it and died. First ridiculed and then harassed by villagers and the local administration, Dashrath remained undaunted and after chipping away for more than two decades, the road is made. The stuff drama is made of! Sadly, Mehta's film falls far short of its inspiration, trading pathos for bathos, drama for melodrama.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui continues to be a class act, proving why he is such a sought-after actor. In the opening sequence, his Dashrath is seen squaring up to the mountain in blood-soaked clothes, challenging it: "Bahut jor hai tujhme? ...Tera khel khatam! (You think you are very powerful? Your game is up.)" Throwing flints at the barren hill, that catches fire, it promises to be a David-versus-Goliath tale and one settles down for a man against nature epic such as 127 Hours or Cast Away. But even as Dashrath cuts his way through the mountain, the narrative plunges downhill with alarming acceleration.

Mehta treads familiar ground showing the caste divide, where the village mukhiya (Tigmanshu Dhulia) gets a horseshoe nailed on a villager's feet for daring to wear shoes, his son (Pankaj Tripathi) abducts and rapes women because he can and refuses to shut down a brick kiln even when a worker falls into it, Naxalites set up a kangaroo court in vengeance and summarily hang the headman, and even Indira Gandhi raises the much-ridiculed slogan: "Garibi hatao!" The scenes evoke nostalgia for his older, better films such as Bhavni Bhavai and Mirch Masala. In Manjhi, all of it falls flat, instead of evoking a gut-wrenching reaction at such incidents which were - and in some places, still are - thought to be normal.

The chemistry between Radhika Apte, who plays Fagunia, and Siddiqui makes the first part somewhat watchable. Married as children, the two are separated because of differences between their families but fall in love when they meet as adults. Even as they enjoy the rides and delights of a village fair, Mehta references Mother India - that behemoth of Nehruvian socialism - with a background score of "Dukh bhare din bitey re bhaiya". But once her character dies, it is wholly on Siddiqui's shoulders to save the film - and he struggles on with a lot of heart but there is little he can do with a weak script and equally indifferent direction.

The second half, when Dashrath turns Forrest Gump and marches on Delhi, during Emergency to boot, to get a government grant for his road-making project that he has been cheated out of seems a tad vacuous. It turns into a familiar - and boring tale - of the lone man's struggle against the mountain of the state. Too much Bollywood-style melodrama, evoking themes of Sufi love, fails because it obviously needed a nuanced touch. But the greatest crime of the film is wanton squandering of talent. Dhulia has shades of Brahmeshwar Singh, the dreaded former chief of the upper caste Bhumihar militia Ranvir Sena but in the end, he is only a cardboard cutout, as is the scheming character played by Tripathi.

The morning show of the film where this writer watched was empty - and with good reason. There is no way to recommend this film to a paying audience.