Sports

DAMARU KO DANDIBIYO

CAST: Khagendra Lamichhane, Menuka Pradhan, Anup Baral, Buddhi Tamang

DIRECTION: Chhetan Gurung

Review: Two Stars **

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’, as the name suggests, is a story about the nearly-forgotten sport of ‘dandi-biyo’—an indigenous amateur game of sticks played in the hills and plains of Nepal, and in some other parts of the Indian sub-continent. And it has the right mix of good intent and heart. But sometimes it takes more than good intent to make a good movie. This film tries too hard to make us care about the sport, so much so it ends up becoming an educational sports film rather than an entertaining sports drama. After finishing his Masters, Dambar (Khagendra Lamicchane) returns to his village with a mission. He wants to breathe new life into dandi-biyo and expand the pop­ularity of the game within his vil­lage first. For that he calls for help from his old village pals Mukhiya (Buddhi Tamang) and Mala (Menuka Pradhan). His friends are reluctant because they are busy in their own lives—Mukhiya’s a poor shepherd and Mala’s a school teacher. The village kids are not convinced either. Why should they give up football and cricket and pick up a game that they know nothing about?

 

But the real obstacle in Dambar’s way is his father (Anup Baral), the headmaster of the village school. Before settling in as the headmas­ter, Dambar’s father used to be an exceptional dandi-biyo player and decades ago, he too had harbored similar hopes of making dandi-biyo popular. Things didn’t pan out as planned and since then he’s devel­oped a bitterness towards the game; he’s disgusted by the idea of his son giving up everything to become a torchbearer of dandi-biyo.

 

The first half of the film is ded­icated to this father-son conflict. There’s nothing new in this graph and the sports genre is overwrought with arcs involving aspirant sons and displeased fathers. ‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ draws our attention to the squabble between Lamicchane and Baral, somewhat, even though they don’t remotely look like father and son. But it’s the progression of events in the second half that least convinces.

 

The screenplay by Lamichhane switches from modest to downright silly, as it catapults the story from Dambar’s village to Kathmandu in a ridiculously staged manner. The later portion lacks the social realism it had when the story was grounded in the village.

 

For a film that wants us to appre­ciate dandi-biyo, it rarely gives us moments that encapsulate the game’s beauty or burst of energy and make us guilty for ignoring something great. Instead, Lamic­chane peppers the screenplay with jingoist sentiments and makes his characters mouth big words. There’s also a nearly 10-minute-long expo­sition scene where Dambar chalks up the complex rules of the game to explain to his teammates.

 

Director Chhetan Gurung fails to weave together these informa­tion-heavy scenes with any kind of visual command. Instead he tries to compensate by cranking up tension in every other scene by injecting inspirational background music and 360-degree shots.

 

All the actors in the movie do a fine job. If only the script had given them a little more life, they would’ve been more lifelike, more relatable. Lamichhane’s Dambar is balled up as a walking-talking activist of dan­di-biyo; not a flesh-and-blood char­acter but more like an ambassador to explicitly champion the philoso­phy of the filmmakers.

 

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ poses big questions about sustainability and ownership of homegrown sports like dandi-biyo and manifests itself as a love letter to the game from the makers. But it’s written with such broad strokes, flowery imagination and in such a pedantic way, it forgets its first responsibility as a film is to engage and entertain.

 

Activism apart, ‘Damaru ko Dan­dibiyo’ excites only few times.