BEYOND ALL BOUNDARIES (Documentary, 97 mins)

Director: Sushrut Jain

An athlete’s life can be both boring and enthralling to watch. Countless hours of a lonely journey that may or may not have a destination, if documented and edited competently, is akin to witnessing the formation of a different, superior breed of humans. They must all begin at a certain level of excellence – which is considered as the bare minimum pro-standard – after which the real struggle to improve begins. Being excellent and representing your countries isn’t even enough; it’s important to stand out and be counted. It’s essential to be dangerously obsessive, and not just be happy with reaching a district or national level. Imagine – failures at the very top of one’s craft are as harmful as failures to make it to the top.

One such example is young Mumbai batting prodigy Prithvi Shaw, one of three lives chronicled in Sushrut Jain’s documentary, ‘Beyond All Boundaries’. Even a casual observer will notice how technically solid the 12-year old kid is. The filmmakers – aided by the voiceover of The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar (who is an avid cricket fan) – do a good job of displaying enough practice footage to prove this. He looks phenomenally sound in the nets for a pre-teen.

The film stops short of directly judging his obsessed jobless single father, who is well aware of the fine lines that could result in a tragic Vinod Kambli instead of a supreme Sachin Tendulkar. Both father and son have dark circles under tired eyes, but bounce about with an energy resulting from absolute belief. Their relationship is what you’d expect from any top athlete-parent relationship in modern history: Agassi and his father, Sharapova and hers, Jelena Dokic and hers, Bernard Tomic and his; where the parents make their kids’ lives their own, striving to achieve a certain selfish kind of victory through these young souls. Perhaps that’s what needed to recognise greatness, or perhaps, at times, the kids find it within themselves; they don’t need coaches or parents – there’s an inner voice. Even if there is one in Shaw’s life, it’s smothered by his father, who is desperate for time to pass quickly, so that Shaw jumps up levels and reaches the ultimate goal: Team India.
This was shot in 2011; Prithvi is now 15, and has just signed a SG-deal worth 36 lakhs, a year and a half after scoring 546 in a Harris Shield match. The belief then, admittedly, is not entirely misplaced.

Even being the best cricket fan can turn into an equally lonely voyage. Sudhir Kumar Gautam, the tireless body-painted conch-blowing Sachin fanatic, a stadium-regular for years, is living testament to this. His life is arguably the most fascinating to watch, because it is unclear if he still retains the joy of being a fan anymore. Cricket is his life and complicated wife, subtly illustrated by the shot of a mother and baby at a train window seat, while he is traveling ticket-less and on good grace to one of countless stadiums in the country, only to watch his heroes play in flesh and blood. A wider shot reveals Sudhir sitting opposite them, oblivious to the world he has chosen to forego. Over the years, Sudhir has become sort of a symbol for the crazed Indian fanaticism for cricket in India; buut here’s a man who’s gone the whole hog – no half measures, no life, no job, no family…just cricket. He is what you’d call the ‘ultimate peak’ of the fan sport. A final montage of him cycling cross-country back to his village in Bihar after ‘winning the cup’ is cut to a perfect journeyman score, and provides the film’s most uplifting portion, even if slightly choreographed.

In contrast, the inspiring story of 18-year old bowler Akshaya Surve, a girl who strives to find her place in the forgotten world of women’s cricket, is handled with less precision. Her coach Aparna Kamble becomes her voice of reason, telling us about her psychology, single mother and scarred history. But one craves for more visual evidence of the girl’s cricket skills and tumultuous home-life, instead of the same footage of her bowling repeatedly played. The girl, though, is endearing and oddly perceptive; she knows where she stands, and she is aware of the brutal realities of her life. An injury, therefore, will deter her far less than it would deter a more fortunate soul.

Moreover, the ongoing narrative of simultaneous 2011 World Cup matches proves to be a hindrance, especially in the opening stages. It isn’t really needed – considering we’re jumping between three unique lives, making for a nice underdog-sports template on its own. Only during the Final, when reactions across India are captured by omnipresent cameras, the elevated feel-good factor leads to a temporary conclusion of these stories, two of which seem too rushed.

Nevertheless, it creates a burning curiosity, to instantly find out where these three lives stand today in 2015, and not only from a cricketing perspective.
Watch this, if only to be reminded how one man’s passion is every other man’s lunacy.