Divulging on the renewed perception towards North East by the rest of India, Banashree C. Chakrabarty delineates on the movie, Mary Kom based on the legendary boxer from North-East M C Mary Kom
From several decades, women protagonists have been portrayed as the ever sacrificing mother, loving as well as revengeful wife or someone struggling to prove her identity in the world dominated by the male fraternity, on the silver screen. But off late the sacrificing, loving and nurturing woman is becoming nothing less than her male counterpart. She’s a fighter, a spy, a daughter making her nation proud.
This saga of the new heroine-turned-hero in Hindi films, is further continued as Priyanka Chopra portrays the World Champion Boxer MC Mary Kom on the biopic of the phenomenal boxer.
Creating great expectations in the hearts of the audience, Piggy Chops is seen transformed from the svelte diva to the muscular and lethal athlete. What catches the audience’s eyes first is the freckle painted face of Priyanka and the broken Hindi spoken, to make her look more from the region.
Directed by Omung Kumar, the movie at the beginning reveals the story of a farmer’s daughter Mary (Priyanka Chopra), who has the penchant urge to become a boxer, but faces the resistance of a father worried that boxing would ruin his daughter’s face for marriage in future. Initially picking up fights here and there with the village lads, she finally meets Coach Narjit Singh (Sunil Thapa), who runs a boxing academy and pleads to let her join boxing and learn professionally. This turns out to be a turning point in Mary’s life and her career as a professional boxer begins, winning through the state level matches to national level competitions. And then at the peak of her career she lands in a wedlock with Onler Kom (Darshan Kumar), who turns out to be a supportive spouse, through her boxing career.
Finally with turns of many events when Mary seems detached from her path of becoming a world champion, her inner calling and her coach’s motivation pushes her to achieve what was unthinkable. Mary joins the World Championships held in India, China, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Barbados and emerges a winner after a break of two years. And finally in 2012 Mary garnered her first Olympic Bronze in London and wrote India’s name in glitters in the sky of world sports.
The film has received a bag of mixed reviews with reviewers claiming that more justice should have been done to the life of MC Mary Kom, as to how is her real life and who is she as a person. But what became more evident was that people outside North-East were able to identify with the film and appreciated it.
Abhilash a movie buff from Bangalore says, “After watching the movie and knowing more about the life of the world champion along with the power packed performance of Priyanka Chopra, I truly believe that we should be proud of the Indian women. And especially when north-east frequently faces biases, movies like this will surely be able to break all of it.”
While the audiences in Assam enjoyed tax free screenings of the flick, unfortunate enough for the people residing in Manipur, where Hindi movies and Hindi Language have been banned by the separatist groups over a decade now, missed the film show based on one of the most famous personalities hailing from the region.
Nevertheless, the audience have enjoyed the movie all over India and appreciated the characterization played by Priyanka Chopra and were able to get an idea of what the north-east is all about.
