It is easy and inevitable to draw a parallel between the real-life struggle of Dashrath Manjhi and Nawazuddin Siddiqui's career trajectory and subsequent growth in the film industry.
Could this be the reason why his performance comes across as astonishingly honest? In every scene that he is cursing and alternately, embracing the mountain that he's about to demolish, there is a raging passion which is inspiring and intimidating in equal measures.
It is one of the rare instances where a real-life personal struggle seeps so deep into an artist's subconscious that it has come out in the most unlikely form albeit in an extremely strong one.
For those who came in late,
Dashrath Manjhi, a poor man from Bihar, broke a mountain (literally) to carve a path that'd ensure greater accessibility to his village from the nearest town.
Nawaz essays this role, a 'low-caste' from a non-descript village in Bihar where post-independence, the village mukhiyas have taken over the duties of the British Raj. He runs away from the village and returns years later to find that the girl he was married to as a child has transformed into a beautiful young woman, Phuganiya. Some dowry elements are thrown in to make things dramatic but director Ketan Mehta manages to weave in a beautiful love story worth shedding a tear or two for.
Nawaz is unassuming, witty and surprisingly charming. The film delightfully uses Mohammad Rafi and Shamshad Begum's Leke Pehla Pehla Pyaar and it is one of the song's warmest renditions ever since Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman immortalised the love couplet in 1956. Radhika Apte shines with her earthy sexiness while a young Nawaz woos her with his rugged attraction and inspired one-liners.
The love story and the emphasis with which it is narrated, is necessary to justify Manjhi's subsequent actions. While Manjhi's story is now part of Bihar's folklore and is told with added layers by the its narrators, the fact that he broke the mountain solely out of the love for his dead wife (she dies due to lack of timely medical aid after an accident) is perhaps debatable. However, Mehta's screenplay focuses completely on the love angle and this is repeated often, just in case you mistook Manjhi's motivations to be driven by fame or money.
As his tireless struggle unfolds on screen, it ironically becomes physically tedious to watch when you look at the magnitude of the task at hand. And the infrastructure (only a hammer and a chisel). However, that is enough for Manjhi. In the mountain, he sees not just an opponent who is meant to be tamed, but a landmass that starts giving him a purpose in an otherwise tragic life. From making him look insane, the magnanimous rock eventually gives him a sense of self-worth and subsequently, recognition.
Other than the physical implausibility, what Manjhi competently manages is not succumbing to disillusionment. From governments and bureaucracies and from lack of encouragement and local corruption. It is a remarkable feat and Mehta, along with his team of writers, manages to keep the developments engaging despite the obvious fear of the narrative veering into monotony.
Manjhi's determination is unshakeable, his battle, like his love, not without its share of landslides. To take a romanticised perspective, breaking the mountain for his dead lover equates to Shah Jahan mounting the Taj Mahal for Mumtaz, an element that the film strongly hints at.
But for all its epic glory (the film is technically sound leave aside a few tacky CGI attempts), Manjhi is not without its narrative inconsistencies. While the songs don't interject and mostly blend in, tracks involving upper caste village men raping and murdering women, wasn't needed and could have made the film's runtime tighter. Apte's accent also dips and she sounds Marathi while trying to sound convincingly Bihari.
Despite these minor glitches, the film is a triumph in many ways. Nawaz delivers one of his most heartfelt and honest performance in this tale that has you surrendered, puts you in a state of trance and even for the cynically- inclined, makes you believe in love.
Love that can move mountains