Any film on Sachin Tendulkar - fictionalised feature or documentary - would inevitably face these two seemingly insurmountable challenges. James Erskine’s documentary, Sachin: A Billion Dreams, seems mindful of both. It is not too packed with jargon, thus making it accessible to those who are not committed cricket buffs. It is entertaining enough to hold the interest of non-fans watching with academic curiosity rather than devotion to an idol.
It is filled with familiar moments that could warm the hearts of the cricketing legend’s die-hard admirers, but is not an in-your-face PR exercise designed to lazily cash in on this monumentally popular Indian cricketer’s readymade fan base. In unobtrusive ways it occasionally reveals hitherto unknown facets of him as a person without stating them in black and white. Above all else, it is a diplomatic enterprise that does not risk openly contesting the popular national sentiment surrounding Tendulkar, and completely glosses over the known controversial aspects of the star’s professional life, yet does so cleverly, so that it comes across as careful rather than worshipful or overtly, shoddily pluggish.
The kid-glove treatment, I assume, was necessary to ensure Tendulkar’s support to the project. It is a measure of Erskine’s skill as a filmmaker that, despite this, Sachin: A Billion Dreams is vastly superior to last year’s Bollywood ventures Azhar ( based on the life of former Indian cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin) and M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story.
Sachin: A Billion Dreams adopts a non-linear narrative structure, inter-cutting between Tendulkar’s phenomenal childhood-till-retirement career path and the present day. The icon’s own commentary about himself is overlaid on file footage and photographs along with comments by a dazzling array of past and present sporting megastars ( Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Virat Kohli among them) , his brother Ajit Tendulkar, wife Anjali Tendulkar, commentator Harsha Bhogle and journalist Boria Majumdar. ( Film stalwart Amitabh Bachchan as the lone non-cricketing talking head is a bit of a misfit here.)
The back-and-forth is smoothly executed by Erskine and editors Deepa Bhatia and Avdhesh Mohla, to the accompaniment of a throbbing soundtrack by A.R. Rahman which is one of the highlights of this film ( in several portions, Rahman lets music cede the floor to the highly recognisable fan cry “Sachiiiiiin Sachiiiiiin” ringing uninterrupted on screen) . Through the family album and actors standing in for the Tendulkar siblings, we meet the gifted child who, with the unstinting support of his parents and brother, Ramakant Achrekar’s no-nonsense training, his own extreme diligence and passion became the giant we know him to be.
Though much of this part of his story is already known, in Erskine’s hands it does not feel stale.
That said, it is important to stress that this is Tendulkar’s version of events, and while following him in the cricketing arena, the film looks at him with a completely uncritical eye.