A Review: M.S. DHONI

M.S. Dhoni – The Untold Story Indeed

The movie ‘M.S. Dhoni’, lives up to its name – ‘the untold story’, not because it shows something previously unknown but because it presents the known into a new light.

There are two greatest challenges that biopic makes face, especially when making a film about someone as famous and publicly known as Dhoni. These challenges are –

1. Creating curiosity and unpredictability in the story, that the whole nation is already aware of.
2. Creating a sense of personal relativity in the minds of people, whose celebrity status itself distances him from the audience to a great extent.

The makers of this film have tackled these challenges very creatively and wisely like this –

a. Non-Linear treatment – 

The movie as a whole is presented in a linear fashion, yet the film begins with what seems to be like the last scene of the movie. The whole movie, then builds up to this last scene, thus ending in a complete circle.

The effect of this treatment is that the audience develop an inherent curiosity at the beginning of the movie itself. The gradual built-up through the anticipation-generating scenes throughout the movie add to this initial effect, making the whole experience relatively novel.

b. Personal lives of supporting characters – 

The makers have not only focused on the involvement of the other characters in Dhoni’s life, but have also portrayed the personal lives of these characters to a considerable extent.

This gives the audience some previously unanticipated visuals that make the audience feel that the story is new and unknown.

c. Dhoni as a person and not just as a cricketer – 

The film seems to be clearly made with a primary focus on presenting Dhoni as a person first and as a cricketer later.

The personal conflicts of Dhoni, in his life, the values that he developed and lived by, and the moulding of his character, are certain facets of Dhoni- the person, in great detail.

This presentation, makes it easier for the audience to relate with the protagonist as they look at him as one of them and not as some distant famous cricketer.

d. Relationships and Emotions – 

Along with Dhoni’s intra-personal relationship, his relationships with other characters are presented with bare realism and absolute simplicity.

This simplistic presentation of various emotions in the relationships, that Dhoni is shown to share with his family, friends, mentors and his romantic interest, strike a chord with the audience, making Dhoni even more realistic and relatable.

e. Simple and realistic dialogues – 

Instead of using this film as an opportunity to add highly poetic dialogues with extremely deep meaning, the makers have kept it simple and real even in the dialogues department, thus pulling the audience closer to the characters.

Although, even such dialogues are written in such manner and placed with such brilliant sense of timing, that their simplicity and realness doesn’t camouflage their hard-hitting effect. Many dialogues are so effective that they keep the audience thinking even after the movie is long over.

Apart from these the technical team has also done their job really well.

The makers have used songs as background score for many scenes. Hence, more than the music of the song, the lyrics of the songs add more meaning to the already meaningful scene, going on in the foreground.

The editing is very creative, in the sense that the merging of real events of the past and the shot scenes of the movie are merged in a very unconventional manner; although with certain flaws.

The editing work, although is quite creative, it isn’t as fine as it should have been. In certain scenes, that are depiction of real life events, the morphed head of Sushant Singh Rajput on the real Dhoni’s body is so obvious that it suddenly pulls the viewer out of the movie, thus breaking the fantastic flow achieved by all other aspects.

That said, these errors are very few in number and are not seen very frequently, hence it doesn’t affect the whole movie.

The actors of this film have indeed outdone themselves. While the veterans like Anupan Kher and Rajesh Sharma are absolutely fantastic, the relatively new actors have also proved their mettle.

Sushant Singh Rajput hasn’t only mimicked Dhoni, but has also created an original movie character of Dhoni, with certain individual and novel inputs. This, in my personal opinion, is what good acting really is.

The young and bubbly Disha Patani is both really talented and really pretty. Any person would fall in love with her in her first scene in the movie; and hence it hurts so much later.

All in all, watch ‘M.S. Dhoni, the untold Story’, to be truly thrilled, motivated, inspired and entertained.

• Neeraj S.K.