The victory chants from beyond the akhada is a moment of pride for an athlete. For the Phogat played by Amir Khan, they cause inner prejudice. Dangal is concerned with the psychological aspect of victory, not just the visceral. To watch Amir grapple with some of them is to reminisce a Gandhian rhetoric from 1910 - "What did they see?". In fact, it was Gandhi who once termed the American bout sport Boxing as uncivilized.
Dangal may not be Anti-Gandhi, yet something about Mahavir Phogat lead me to think so. For starters, he is the kind of patriarch who pits his own daughters against wrestlers to raise them strong as an alpha-male. In other words, a misogynist.
To realize Dangal takes place in Haryana, the misogynistic native of Mahavir Phogat, is to think through the movie. His two daughters Babitha and Geetha grow up to win an international medal for the nation, and the movie uses sport genre tropes to provoke thoughts. Unlike in Chak De India, you ought to be disengaged by the provocations and forced narrative than vice verse. It is in the nature of the genre. Being a responsible Indian I was inspired by Chak De India, yet feel the uninspiring Dangal is a far better film in comparison.
That is because somewhere in Nitesh Tiwari’s symbolic climax is Amir Khan having bouts with his own temperament, which kind of leads you to pseudo-intellectual assumptions.
Assumption 1: Phogat say the purpose of bout sport is entertainment. Despite that, he forces the daughters to the ringside and ring to show the savage in us. That assumption takes place between the film.
Assumption 2: Nitesh Tiwari skillfully weaves you into its magical realism to make you think Phogat is not a patriot. And, that one needn’t be a patriot to win a national medal, which is an intelligent idea on paper.
These are the thematic of the sport, and I loved Dangal up to a point for exactly this reason. Then comes the climax, which contains the movie’s minor indiscretion or it’s ingenious takeout depending on how you choose to it.
Assumption 3: They play the National Anthem and Amir Khan’s face mirror the human myth. We never know if his Mahavir Phogat is actually a patriot or skeptic bordering on being anti-national.
After all the analysis, you might want to consider two factors. One, Khan is not a stupid to leave a glaring error/national anthem in the script, contradicting earlier notions that one need not be a patriot to win a national medal. And, two, Phogat seems a man with misconceived notions of Gandhian ideologies. He says wrestling is entertainment, and still pits his daughters to a bout with himself in one scene. There. To watch Dangal is to think through the movie. I really enjoyed it, especially the bout in the climax.