It’s a case of the truth as stranger than fiction. Dashrath Manjhi’s incredible story is the sort that feels tailor-made for a film adaptation: a poor, low-caste labourer from a barren little corner of Bihar called Gehlaur grieves over a wife who has slipped and fallen while walking across the craggy ridges of the hill that hems the village—and effectively cuts it off from the rest of civilisation—and died during the long trip to the hospital, on the other side of the hill. Heartbroken, the widower decides to take up hammer and chisel and exact revenge upon the murderous rock face. Twenty-two years it takes, from 1960 to 1982—of chipping away at the mountain inch by inch every day, of tolerating taunts from his community and family members, all convinced he’s lost his mind, and of dealing with bureaucratic inefficiency—until a crude road is finally ready. The path drastically reduces travelling time from the village to the nearest town, allowing Gehlaur’s residents access to essential health and commercial services. In fact, Manjhi is said to have worked for the community’s betterment right up to his death in 2007, lobbying to get a bridge built across a nearby river and factories set up in the area to provide employment to locals, among other things.

Given that astonishing, inspiring premise, it’s little wonder it was scooped up to be made into a big-screen feature by Ketan Mehta, who is best known for having previously directed biopics on historical figures like Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Mangal Pandey. The film’s chances were further boosted when one of Indian cinema’s most talented actors—the phenomenal Nawazuddin Siddiqui—was roped in to play the title role; for those of us who think he’s the best thing since sliced bread, this is the project we’ve been waiting for, one that places the spotlight squarely on him. But Mehta appears to have lost faith in the appeal of Manjhi’s true story and Siddhiqui’s fine instincts as a character actor—why else would he have seen fit to flood Manjhi - The Mountain Man with so much needless melodrama and contrivance? Indeed, the director, who shares writing credits here with Mahendra Jhakar and Anjum Rajabali, Bollywoodifies the script to such an extent that it ends up squelching out all genuine feeling, a tonal misfire that prevents us from fully sympathising with characters and renders the entire enterprise disappointingly hollow.

Manjhi seeks to examine the man behind the legend, the circumstances he emerged from and how tragedy triggered in him the resolve to take matters into his own hand—he knew change wasn’t coming any other way. We learn that high-caste Zamindars have been lording it over Gehlaur for generations, compelling poor, “untouchable” families into debt and bonded labour. But Manjhi, something of a born rebel, runs away from the village as a young boy before his tipple-loving father can sell him off to the evil Mukhiya (Tigmanshu Dhulia), heading elsewhere to find work. Seven years later, Manjhi is back, in glad rags and good spirits: the government has just banned untouchability and he’s certain it’s the start of a bright, more equal, future.

Not quite so. No sooner has he stepped into the village than he’s beaten up by the Mukhiya’s henchmen. And the pretty lady he’s fallen head-over-heels for on the way over (Radhika Apte) turns out to be none other than his own wife, Phaguniya (they’d been hitched as children, you see, but kept apart by family feuds). His father-in-law, however, won’t allow him to see her—even though she is keen on him too—

forcing the couple to elope. They have a few blissful years together before the aforementioned accident occurs, and nothing is ever the same for Dashrath Majhi again.

You really couldn’t ask for better source material than this. Or a more versatile lead, for that matter. Which makes Mehta’s mishandling of both all the more perplexing. Instead of focusing on finding the best way to depict Manjhi’s staggering, superhuman feat of resilience—the point of it all, really—the director seems convinced that the only way to elicit audience response is through a tried and tested Love Story, piling on the sentimentality, so that there’s enough sugar here to make you gag. Manjhi and Phaguniya’s “romance” is thus jacked up to practically cartoonish proportions; real chemistry or affection between the two is lacking, leaving just over-the-top bickering and flirting to contend with, which makes it hard to tolerate, much less root for them. And they also bandy around a plastic replica of the Taj Mahal, as if afraid the obvious comparison to Manjhi’s own “monument to love” might have slipped

by us the first hundred times it

was made, once even explicitly via dialogue.

Supporting actors too don’t make it beyond caricatures, generally comprising either kind-hearted, destitute victims, or mustache-twirling specimens of villainy. There is, additionally, something off, artificial, about how Manjhi looks, a strange stageyness about the proceedings—and I don’t mean that in a complimentary, self-reflexive way, but as rather tacky. We see it in the lighting during night-time scenes, in the less-than-natural make-up and costumes, and we can feel it in the overly-theatrical background score by Sandesh Shandilya.  

Manjhi does attempt, significantly, to illustrate the broader social and political contexts that marked the protagonist’s lifetime—top most among its targets is the caste system and the suffering that associated notions of conferred purity and pollution have given rise to, followed by corruption within the administrative system, the Naxalite movement, and general political duplicity, to name just a few. But although it means well, the film’s commentary is far too scattered and superficial to be effective; it rushes to cover too much ground, and ends up only stating the obvious, never quite getting to the heart of these issues.

If you’re looking to actually learn about Manjhi,

you’d do better to watch Kumud Ranjan’s 2012 documentary The Man Who Moved the Mountain; it’s not expansive, or very in-depth, but at least you get to hear from the man himself. Mehta’s film, meanwhile, preoccupies itself with pretty embellishments and appearances, failing to offer the sort of intimate portrait of our hero that a good biopic should strive to do. A life like Manjhi’s deserves more.