Ladies First Review: Here is Why The Deepika Kumari Documentary Falls Short!
Documentary: Ladies First
Rating: ** ½ (two and a half stars)
There is so much that one expects from the sharp-shooting archer Deepika Kumari story as told in the terse and brief documuntery Ladies First.
Some of Bollywood’s names have been recommending the film by Uraaz Bahl.
While the idea of celebrating the rise from the ashes of abject poverty and crippling prejudices of one of India’s most accomplished female sportpersons, is indeed laudable, the documentary left me with more questions than answers. At less than 40 minutes of playing time, Deepika’s rise from an impoverished background inJharkhand to the No. 1 archer in India, barely gets a decent spread-out in the narrative.
Everything is done in a a rush,and a hush. We never get to know Deepika’s inner feeling as she struggled against gender prejudices and her destiny of poverty.It’s like getting vivid glimpses of landscape from a moving train.
Beating all the odds, is a great hookline for a motivational life-story. But where is the breathing space for the saga to grow? The pace is way too hurried to allow us to enter Deepika’s psyche, except for one moving meltdown towards the end where she talks about how unfair the nation is to sportspersons who fail to make the big win at the Olympics.
It is here that I realized that Ladies First is actually about the grace required by the sportsperson as well as the public to accept defeat as part of the cycle of victory.
Deepika Kumari doesn’t say so. But we come across as a nation of spoilsports who worship only success and the successful. Ladies First tells us why it is important to respect those who represent us at international sporting events, irrespective of whether they actually bring in the medal. Lamentably the message is put forward in a profile that’s way too sketchy and skimpy. More fleshing-out of Deepika’s background and more conversations delving into her fight against poverty and prejudice would have made Ladies First a documentary worthy of its distinguished subject.
Ladies First doesn’t shoot its arrow half as directly as Deepika Kumari.
