Making biopics is a tightrope walk. If a filmmaker amps up the fictional narrative too much they can end up killing the reality in the story of their hero or on the flip side if there is an overdose of bland reality with bare-minimum cinematic elevations, it ends up giving an aftertaste of a documentary. When a biopic is made based on Muttiah Muralitharan, a person who has an inherent hero’s journey, the expectations are naturally high, but director-writer Sripathy has rather surprisingly gone ahead with the latter approach and has delivered a sobering and excessively mellowed down take on the cricketer’s life.
Cast: Madhur Mittal, Nasser, Harikrishnan, King Rathnam
Direction: MS Sripathy
At a time when most biopics are making a mountain out of a molehill while translating reality to the silver screen, this approach of Sripathy might seem well-grounded. But I sincerely felt that the highs and lows in the story of Muralitharan, which had interesting elements like the coming-of-age phase during the Srilankan Civil War, the chucking allegations against him, the hate from the umpires and the steel brace test, organically warrants an electrifying, effective hero’s elevation. Make no mistake, Sripathy doesn’t miss highlighting these crucial events, but his staging makes us feel emotionally detached from these innately affecting real-life episodes.
Similarly, there are moments that glance upon the vices of Muralitharan like his eagerness to party during crucial training sessions and his passive-aggressive nature towards his mother as a teenager. But they hardly affect the larger story, as we see him deliver an invariably outstanding performance in the post-party cricket matches, and develop an instantly cordial relationship with his mother as an adult.
The director’s urge to pack in as many events as possible within the narrative kills the intrigue as the film becomes a visual Wikipedia article dropping highlights of every three years from Muralitharan’s story. The damage control in the form of a parallel track involving a senior and junior sports journalist, who love and hate Muralitharan, respectively, also fails to do the trick. Though I quite liked this idea and wanted to see more of the duo’s conversation, the interest is lost once the screenplay shifts back to one of Muralitharan’s on-field exploits.
In fact, during the promotions of 800, Muralitharan said that the film is less about cricket and more of an exploration of the unknown pages of his life. But, the film is actually the inverse. 800 features numerous cricket matches starting from Muralitharan’s childhood days to his pinnacle test match against India, where he secured his 800th wicket.
Although these matches have impressive sports choreography, the tension of the game is absolutely absent. Of course, we are presented with a recreation of a cricket match from the past, but the staging and background score, which can massively elevate a moment, let the scenes down and allow it to sink with their underwhelming contributions.
Though the film’s focus is primarily on the protagonist Muralitharan (Madhur Mittal) throughout the runtime, we barely understand him as a person. From growing up among bomb blasts to being subjected to terrorist attacks, the man has seen it all. But at no point do we get an insight into his psyche. Is he raging within? Or has he grown numb to the unfortunate events around him? We are not really sure, as the film is more eager to throw one more event from his life rather than taking a pause to dissect the man.
Despite these flaws, the one area where Sripathy bowls us over is the film’s politics. Even though the film highlights events of the Civil War, it stays away from blatantly villainising either party. The major highlight of the film has to be Muralitharan’s interaction with LTTE head Prabhakaran, where they discuss the necessity of a war. The dialogue and gaze in this scene are handled with great perfection that it encourages even the opposers of both icons to take a moment and listen to their stance. How I wish such significant personality was prevalent throughout 800.
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