Review: Gold- One country, one medal?

PC: The Indian Express


Gold has been promoted as a movie about independent India winning its first gold medal in hockey, with Akshay Kumar as the team's Bengali manager,Tapan Das. The film isn't exactly that though.


The film is about the dream of the 1936 Berlin Olympics gold-winning British Indian hockey team to win gold as independent India, and sing their national anthem. Destiny thwarts their dream in the form of WW2 and divides the collective dream into two after the Partition. The next generation of players from both countries, then, ramp up to fulfil the older generations’ aspirations in the 1948 London Olympics


It is heartwarming to see scenes like the Indian manager wish the Pakistani captain good luck in the locker room before their match with Great Britain and the Pakistani team openly support India against Great Britain. Can't imagine such a thing happening now, as much as I’d love for it to happen.

I have often wondered what life would be like if we had normal, peaceful diplomatic relations with Pakistan. This thought intensified into an emotion while watching Gold, for I truly wished this film was made as a collaboration between the film industries of both the countries.

When it comes to Indian hockey films. comparisons with Chak De are inevitable. But Gold doesn't focus a lot on the game - it focuses on other aspects, like teamwork, unity, politics and ego clashes- so a comparison with Chak De becomes pointless.

Gold is visually captivating, with its beautiful cinematography by Álvaro Gutiérrez blending seamlessly with Rajesh Devraj's screenplay, which weaves the past with the present, the new with the old, and the privileged with the ordinary. The technical letdowns of this film, however, are its repetitive, predictable, overtly patriotic dialogues and its lacklustre musical score.

Of late, I've observed that Akshay Kumar does a good job of selecting strong, convincing sometimes taboo topics for films, but messes them up with idiosyncrasies. Gold isn't any different, with unnecessary romantic songs in a monastery of all places, an almost ridiculous Buddhist monk, a sudden Punjabi dance number, a needlessly young heroine and dialogues spoken in a faux Bangla accent. I’ve lost count of the number of times I heard the word Gondogol in different accents each time!

But, unlike some senior actors we are familiar with, Kumar believes in giving equal screen space to the lesser known actors. Hence we get to see a lot of Amit Sadh as the regal Raghubir Pratap Singh, Sunny Kaushal as the hotheaded yet sweet Himmat Singh, Vineet Kumar Singh as the hurt yet patriotic Imtiaz Shah and Kunal Kapoor as the possibly Dhyan Chnad-inspired Samrat. I much preferred Nikita Dutta's short yet vivacious role as Simran to Mouni Roy's slightly longer melodramatic role as Monobina Das, Tapan's wife. As I said, maybe directors should began to cast actresses actually old enough to be Akshay Kumar's wife, rather than PYTs.

Gold showed us a small glimpse of how priorities today are vastly different, and more self-centred from what they were two generations ago. Today, we fight amongst ourselves, don't shy away from delivering justice to our own people, promote hate via polarising (and more often than not, fake) Whatsapp messages and dig up issues of nothing, such as national anthems in theatres . All this despite being in a country otherwise undisturbed by violence. Quite unlike the 1940s, when we were under the British rule, fighting for them in a World War that destroyed millions of lives and witnessing the power of nuclear weapons. All this makes one think whether what we are "fighting" for now is patriotism or not. And if it is, then what were our forefathers fighting for?

Anyway. Overall, Gold makes for an engaging film, especially on a patriotic day or when one is feeling especially patriotic. Ha! Caught ya :-p!

Best dialogue?
Raghuveer Pratap (to Himmat Singh): Ye champagne hai. Isko gatka nahi jaata. Chuski li jaati hai
Himmat Singh (with subtle swag) : Mai Punjab se hoon. Machli ko tairna mat sikhao.

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