Maidaan: Ajay Devgn's stellar performance makes this sports biopic engrossing (2024)

[00:00:00] Hi, welcome to Onmanorama movie podcast, Start, Action, Cut. Today we are decoding the Hindi movie, Mayadan. It's co-written and directed by Amit Ravindranath Sharma and starring Ajay Devgan in the lead. So, the movie Mayadan chronicles the illustrious career of

[00:00:34] Syed Abdul Rahim, the coach and manager of Indian National Football in the 1950s and 60s. And the era which has been marked as golden period in Indian football. The remarkable feat that India has achieved during his tenure include two Asian Games gold medals,

[00:00:55] playing semi-finals of Melbourne Olympics in 1956, winning two titles of Colombo Cup among others. So, Swati is here to join the discussion. Swati, how did you enjoy the movie? Well, Patna Kumar, when compared to all the other recent Hindi movies that I've watched

[00:01:17] recently, Mayadan was the one movie which I really liked. I'm not saying that the movie was extremely brilliant or anything, but it had enough substance to hold the audience's attention. So, India is an extremely cricket-oriented nation and I think Mayadan was able to start a

[00:01:33] conversation about Indian football and how it was evolved because people like me who were born towards the late 90s, 1997 that is. I was not really aware of a person named Esse Rahim before I watched the movie if I'm being honest because this happened many,

[00:01:51] many years ago before I was born. To know that he spearheaded the golden era of Indian football was indeed amazing. The movie captures the era when football fueled the aspirations of the youth in the newly independent nation without romanticizing it, meaning the movie

[00:02:11] is not very emotional and it keeps a certain sense of balance throughout. Usually what we see in sports movies is that it might be a little bit lengthy, but it should have enough substance to that hooking factor. I think Mayadan really had it and anyways we'll talk about

[00:02:28] performances later. Ajit Devgan, I think this is one of the few movies that I really, really liked him as an actor. He was truly into his character and I think he pulled off his character really perfectly and all the other actors also who portrayed the players,

[00:02:45] all of them were really brilliant and I think on the whole I really enjoyed Mayadan. Yes, what is striking about the movie is that it's a sign of progression. It defines the

[00:02:58] nature of the plot. There are no very huge big bang actions from the word go. It starts off in a very moderate fashion and then progresses very absorbingly and then culminates with a huge exciting factor. So what do you think about the progression of the movie?

[00:03:22] Like you said, Padma Kumar, the movie does start off in a decent manner and eventually it does start picking pace because there are so many years or so many Olympics that the movie has to

[00:03:33] cover and I think pace wise the movie was really okay. I wouldn't say it was too slow but somewhere I felt like the movie could have been shorter. I don't know if

[00:03:44] it's because of my attention span issues but I felt like a lot of scenes could have been avoided because there are these usual scenes where there is the internal politics happening within the federation and the coach and the players. That is like the cliche things that

[00:04:00] you see in every other Indian sports movie and if those elements could have been avoided, I think there would have been a better pace and definitely like we've discussed, this is the golden era of Indian football and the sweat and blood on the turf earned by the

[00:04:16] team. I really liked how they mentioned in the movie that the Indian team got the moniker Brazilians of Asia and while he's out there, he's touring the entire nation to find people, we are introduced to players like Chunni Goswami, P. K. Banerjee, Peter Zangraj and even

[00:04:35] Tulsi Das Balram from different corners of India. I think that journey was really nice to see somebody like him going around the nation to pick good players and to make a good team for

[00:04:48] the country. It was really amazing to see that and even though the movie is talking about many strong players and talented players, at its core, I think it also talks about Abdul Rahim

[00:05:02] as a person and why he was hailed as the greatest football coach and manager that the country has ever seen. Yes, as you said earlier, those who are born in the 80s or 90s, they see India

[00:05:15] vis-a-vis the world football, India's position as underdogs and they cannot even dream of even imagine of India playing at the world stage. So for them, this movie is an eye opener that India too had passed when India played at the Olympics and they had reached the semifinals

[00:05:39] and such aspects. So now there's the football, the informative aspects of the film. Then coming to the cinematic aspect, I think the performance of the actors, I won't say that almost all of them, mainly Ajay Devgnath, as you said earlier,

[00:05:57] he's the most important factor in this movie and along with him, we see Mercurial Saira and composed Rahim make for an enterprising combination in a relatively traditional household. Swati, how would you explain the performance of the actors?

[00:06:16] For me, I think Ajay Devgnath was the sole factor that took the movie forward. Not that any of the other actors were bad compared to him but no, they were all absolutely great for me. But Ajay Devgnath and Priyamani, both of their performances, I really loved. Obviously,

[00:06:31] Priyamani had a little screen time compared to the other characters but the role that she was given, whatever she was asked to play, I think she did a very decent and a very grounded

[00:06:42] performance. This would be a better definition of how she played the character. Like I said, I have not seen Ajay Devgnath take on such an intense role. Maybe like in Singham, he's playing a police officer but this was like he's a serious man, he's very goal-oriented, he's focused

[00:06:56] and you can see the fire in his eyes actually that he wants this team to go forward, win trophies for the country. All of that is actually in Ajay Devgnath's eyes and since

[00:07:06] most of us don't know who the real Sairahim was, when you think about this person, I think surely Ajay Devgnath's face will definitely pop up whenever you think about the character or the real person. So such is the perfection showed by the actor. So very

[00:07:21] few performances I think will stay in our hearts like this one this year because you know in India, I'm talking about Bollywood especially. One thing is that this movie was actually, they did not perform well at the box office. I was really kind of shocked that they did

[00:07:37] not perform well because compared to all the other recent movies that released in Hindi recently, this was actually a very nice movie and I think Ajay Devgnath can get like really great honors also for this role. True and also he ensured that even his body language and

[00:07:55] his demeanor and his gestures all very aesthetically conformed to the character's real aspects. So and also I think technical wise too it's brilliant, for example the camera, the visuals in an unsaturated color tone, in tandem with the calmness and composure of the movie,

[00:08:18] it was brilliant. And also the music. Then there are a few things that I would like to point out as I would say didn't work for me like the long extra minutes allotted for establishing

[00:08:30] the reticence or the slow pace of Rahim and that made I think that made the the movie extra long. And also some supportive scenes like the interactions between the kid and the grandmother were poorly written and rest of them they were brilliant. So if I ask

[00:08:50] you to point out some drawbacks, do you have any? Like I mentioned before, I think they could have been shorter with the runtime of the movie for a better impact and a few scenes like

[00:09:02] you mentioned before felt like a bit stretched out. I did not think that was necessary because I think the filmmakers spent a bit too much time on establishing the characters and I don't

[00:09:12] think that was really necessary because it had a lot to say. So if they would have spent a little less time on the initial part of the movie, it would have been better. And also like

[00:09:22] I mentioned before the the cliché aspect of the movie like the politics between the federation and the coach. This is something that we've seen in every other sports movie that you know

[00:09:31] released in India and that was extremely it was a little bit boring not extremely but a little bit boring I would say because we know what is going to happen they are going to create a

[00:09:40] tantrum and then the coach and the team are going to come out of it and they are going to win. That is the normal so we know that so that did not create any surprising element or

[00:09:49] it not create any extra masala for the movie I would say. So these are the only two factors that I really noticed. I don't know if it's a flaw or anything but just my personal opinion.

[00:09:58] Like many other hit sports biopics Maidan too makes viewers exult with the excitement of high octane climax moments so that brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks for listening to Start Action Produced and hosted by me Patmokumar with technical

[00:10:18] production by Idea Brew Studios. Follow www.onmanorama.com for more podcasts on movies and be sure to come back for the next episode of Start Action Cut that will be out on the next Monday. Thank you.