Shabaash Mithu movie review: A flaccid, unimaginative tribute to the great Mithali Raj

Language: Hindi

“One of the greats of the game” – that’s how the International Cricket Council (ICC) website describes her. Former Indian captain Mithali Dorai Raj, who retired last month after a glorious couple of decades in her chosen sport, has a mile-high stack of milestones to her name despite the marginalisation of women’s cricket in the country. She holds the record for the highest number of runs scored by any individual player in women’s international cricket. She was the first woman cricketer to cross 6,000 runs in One Day Internationals, and the first to breach the 7,000 mark. She was the first Indian cricketer – male or female – to score 2,000 runs in T20 Internationals. She led India to two World Cup finals. And among numerous awards and titles over the years, she has been the Wisden Leading Woman Cricketer in the World.

Mithali is a global cricketing icon with accomplishments that could send your head spinning, but director Srijit Mukherji’s biopic fails to note or convey the full blast of her achievements. Shabaash Mithu (Well Done, Mithu), written by Priya Aven, stars Taapsee Pannu as the titular lead. The film acknowledges Mithali’s role in raising the profile of women’s cricket in India but gives us little idea of the grit that must have helped her along. Shabaash Mithu is also unable to capture the fire on the field that made Mithali Raj the heavyweight that she is.

Taapsee is the star of the enterprise yet the best-written portion in the film precedes her entry on screen. This is the part about the girl Mithu, a gifted Bharat Natyam dancer and student, discovering the bat and ball through her friend Noorie. Cricket is assumed to be a boy’s preserve in their families and social circles, compelling Noorie to use ingenuity and deception to stick with the game she loves, even as her conservative mother tries to ‘feminise’ her by forcing her to take dance lessons.

Mithu in her early years is played by the darling child actor Inayat Verma, and Noorie by the firecracker Kasturi Jangam. Noorie’s Muslim religious identity is not over-emphasised. It just happens to be. We get plenty of indications that Mithu is Tamilian, but this point too is not over-stressed. She just is. Although it requires a leap of the imagination to accept Hindi as the language of a film centred around a Tamilian family residing in Andhra Pradesh, the writer and director smartly make it work with a mix of accents (thankfully not caricatured, as is Hindi cinema’s wont), an occasional line in languages other than Hindi but not so many as to bewilder the film’s primary audience, and by skipping Bollywood’s ‘Madrasi’ stereotype. Once the action shifts to north India, this challenge largely recedes into the background.

The chemistry and warmth between the two little kids, the sense of humour, innocence and intelligence written into their interactions, the animosity of local boys, the pace of these scenes and the arrival of a mentor, coach Sampath Kumar (Vijay Raaz), make Shabaash Mithu’s opening half hour or so an enjoyable ride.

Childhood gives way to adolescence and to Taapsee on the pitch, at first looking out of place since she is initially supposed to be Mithu in her mid-teens. Shabaash Mithu thereafter has an episodic feel and pretensions to a grandeur that it does not possess. The writing becomes progressively weaker and the direction increasingly limp. I suppose we should have sensed the coming downhill slide in the transparently contrived set-up of that childhood scene in which Sampath Kumar visits the protagonist’s home and praises her skills, but the family thinks he is describing their son who aspires to be a cricketer. The misunderstanding is obvious to anyone but them and the clarification can be seen coming from a mile.

We get glimpses of the rich material Mithali’s journey offers: the caste diversity in the team that is alluded to but not spelt out; a Dalit teammate describing her work with animal skins; Sampath making Mithu aware of her financial privilege in comparison with the other players; a teammate so embroiled in her rivalry with Mithu that she considers her an enemy instead of seeing her for what she is – an unparalleled talent and potential ally. The latter relationship gets the space it deserves and a credible resolution, but Shabaash Mithu does not mine the other elements effectively. For one, it does not portray caste accurately, referring to the economic hardships some of the women face and not the discrimination intrinsic to the caste system.

An early indicator of the script’s inability to handle nuance or attain depth comes with a scene in which Sampath is shown driving a nail into Mithu’s shoe to stop her from dragging her foot out of the crease. The family does not protest against such abuse – that they would not is totally believable. The real Mithali has spoken to the news media of the real Sampath’s harsh methods with a tone of acceptance – her attitude to the man who changed her life is also believable. Shabaash Mithu is not emotionally invested in him though, so there is no excuse for why the film itself presents his violence in a manner and tone that pretty much normalise it.

Once Mithu travels out of Hyderabad, the film gradually runs out of substance and steam. There are too many painfully long stretches in Shabaash Mithu overlaid with music, including songs, that interfere with the storyline. Scenes in which Mithu is shown playing while grappling with personal issues are accompanied by awkward, hyper-sorrowful background music. The song Hindustan Meri Jaan is quite lovely, but it is over-used.

International cricket matches that must have been hugely exciting in reality are mechanically aired back to back in Shabaash Mithu, without contextualisation, barely examining strategy or on-field equations between the players and teams. So many Hindi films have brilliantly depicted cricket on the big screen – most recently, Kabir Khan’s 83 and the less high-profile Kaun Pravin Tambe? directed by Jayprad Desai. These could have served as inspiration for shooting Mithu’s matches, so could the hockey flick Chak De! India, which was specifically about women being ignored by India’s sporting establishment. But Mukherji just does not breathe life into the matches in Shabaash Mithu.

Srijit Mukherji is a multiple National Award winner who works primarily in Bengali cinema. The awards notwithstanding, his works frequently favour style and melodrama over all else. Shabaash Mithu does not possess even these qualities.

The unimaginativeness in handling Mithali Raj’s story is epitomised by the decision to end Shabaash Mithu on a cricket World Cup that India lost. No doubt reaching a final is a feat and it is important to encourage sportspersons every step of the way, but it makes no sense to end a film about a super-achiever by placing the spotlight on a loss when there are numerous victories and records to parade instead before the audience – records that are not even cited in the film. Worse, Shabaash Mithu does not capture the complexity of circumstances that led to increasing visibility for women’s cricket in India in the run-up to the 2017 Cup: Mithali Raj’s charisma, the live telecast of matches, the advent of the social media that mainstreamed discussions on the neglect of women’s cricket, and so much more.

Through all this, Taapsee, who has been so much better so often in the past, looks inexplicably distant and wan as Mithu. With such flaccid direction and writing coming her way, who can blame her?

Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars) 

Shabaash Mithu is now in theatres.

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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