A BILLION DREAMS MADE ME CRY: SACHIN SAYS, A BILLION DREAMS REVIEW

                                                                  Image credited to google

Cast: Sachin Tendulkar, Anjali Tendulkar, Sara Tendulkar, Arjun Tendulkar, Mayuresh Pem, MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag

Director: James Erskine

Rating: 4 stars

The year was 2009. Stand-up comedy was barely a crawl in India, and from those pioneering early sets performed late at night in Bombay, I remember only one gag. At the time, bullying politicians were divisively calling for Maharashtrian signboards everywhere and for 'outsiders' to leave, going against the welcoming heart of maximum city. It was in this charged atmosphere that a bright young comic called Rohan Joshi said he, as a Maharashtrian wounded by this communality, would nevertheless offer a couple of words on behalf of Maharashtrians everywhere. The night was full of barely amused and judgemental drinkers, and Joshi was very, very green, but with two words he brought the house down, rousingly and immediately. "Sachin Tendulkar."

In our lives and times, India has leaned on that name. Hard. It is a name we have used as mythology and as mantra, as hope and as heroin.

It is also a name, I have argued for quite some time now, that does not belong in a movie. The narrative is too superhuman, too peerless, too free of greys and conflict to actually make for stirring cinema. A movie about him would end up paying obeisance, not telling a tale. It would capitalise Him, and likely be closer to Jai Santoshi Maa than to Dhoni. A rise and rise and rise does not a story make.

Sachin: A Billion Dreams is thankfully not a biopic. This is a documentary not merely about the man with that name, but one narrated by him, one where he tells his own story in his own words. It is not journalistic or incisive or probing. It feels, instead, intimate - as intimate as it can feel, anyway, for a film where an audience claps and cheers alongside those who clapped and cheered live, years ago. Which is to say: it is us today applauding in time with us yesterday.

An example of how personal this feels: I have never, ever heard an audience of the press break into unanimous and spontaneous applause at a film's intermission. Yet, technically speaking, it is unexciting filmmaking. Director James Erskine clunkily strings together a greatest-hits narrative by numbers, with a constantly swelling background score, too many reverential voices and zero contrarians. AR Rahman's music is overwrought - though the fan-favourite Maa Tujhe Salaam is used quite spiffily - and the changing aspect ratio is distracting, as is the tragically un-remastered video footage. There are no narrative flourishes, and the voiceover is overtly literal, featuring shots, for instance, of a lady huffing tiredly up the stairs while Tendulkar tells us his mother never tired. This is a film that unapologetically panders to the fans, one that preaches to the choir.