After Ted Lasso’s glorious Emmy winIt’s easy to see that the beloved Apple TV Plus show sparked our collective love for an inspiring and overlooked sports story. But for those who have wrapped up last season, or just want more of the heartwarming action on the pitch and drama off the pitch that made Ted Lasso such a hit, they don’t need to look any further. that Chak De! India.

Chak De! India (Let’s go! India in translation) is a 2007 film about India’s national women’s hockey team, as a disgraced former hockey player – played by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, often known simply as SRK – leads the motley group of athletes to world victory.

Inspired by the Indian women’s team’s victory in 2002 at the Commonwealth Games, it’s a story with the usual ups and downs of inspiring sports films: squabbles between teammates, last-minute funding dropouts and the tension of decided matches. by a single penalty shot.

The similarities to Ted Lasso are often striking, even though Chak De! India published more than a decade earlier. The grouping of teammates arguing, the tensions that move seamlessly between locker rooms and passes on the pitch, as well as the light tone that prevents a sports drama – still largely serious – from feeling too weighed down by ambitions and obstacles faced by athletes. There’s even a precursor to Ted Lasso’s Season 2 “Led Tasso” scene, where Jason Suidekis reverses his usual charm to become a tyrant, giving players a common enemy to unite against.

But Chak De! is still a film in its own right, and it can be a dissection to dissect it too much through the lens of a contemporary (and American-British) production, rather than on its own terms.

An epic sports drama

The writing and characterization are incredibly crisp. An angry Punjabi girl apologizes to another player, while threatening him with violence if he doesn’t accept the apology. A desperate father asks what his daughter is going to feed her future husband, as she holds up her hockey stick and says “that”. It’s times like these that so clearly define the motivation and pressures of the incredible cast of Chak De !.

It helps that these girls can actually to play hockey, giving a sense of realism to a genre that can often be weighed down by airy and unconvincing gameplay.

The director of the film, Shimit Amin, said that, in order to prepare the actors, “We had training sessions lasting three to four months. They had to get up at 4:30 am, go to camp and stick to a diet. It was pretty crazy, but we had to do it.

“Unlike cricket, it’s a very physical sport with 70 minutes of intense running, stick pushing and bending that could break your back. The ball can hit you, just like the stick; we had to take a lot of precautions to make sure our players knew what to do. They had to be fit enough to last 70 minutes – actually more, because we were shooting on an eight hour day.

However, it is the context of India that gives Chak De! its most insightful and moving moments.

In India, field hockey is technically the national sport, although the cultural presence of cricket is much larger – and it is a ripe tension for on-screen exploration, with contempt displayed not only for the sport. female but a second level ‘dribble’ pushing these athletes on their journey to prove themselves. (“It’s not exactly cricket,” a player’s boyfriend tells him contemptuously.)

As a nation of over 1.3 billion people too, a team that draws on players from all over the country is pushing the differences between players to the limit – some speaking entirely different languages ​​and dialects from the rest of the world. ‘team.

In 2018, a census analysis of India showed that nearly 20,000 distinct ‘mother tongues’ were alive and well across the country – and having players who can only communicate through their actions is an incredible way for a movie. to show, not to say, how the characters feel for each other.

The legacy of the score, as well as the discrimination faced by Muslims in India, is subtly woven into the backdrop of the story. SRK coach Kabir was once the captain of India’s men’s hockey team but fell out of favor and hurriedly left the family home after baseless accusations of match-fixing during a Indo-Pakistani match.

Civilians interviewed on the street ask why “his guy” (the Muslims) didn’t move to Pakistan during the partition, while neighbors write “traitor” on the side of his house. When SRK says a prayer in Arabic, saying “Nasrun minal lahe wah fatahun kareeb” (may Allah give me the strength to win), it goes to the heart of the mistreatment he faces because of his religion.

The eventual victory is a huge vindication of not just Kabir but true sportsmanship – having fallen victim to end of career rumors after something as simple as a handshake with a Pakistani squad member , and fought to bring unity to a group of young women who spend much of the film blaming each other. When two warring players learn to pass each other – allowing the other to score instead of trying to rack up their own goals – it’s extremely moving.

Lasting two and a half hours, it will take the equivalent of about five episodes of Ted Lasso to complete Chak De! India off – probably with subtitles, if you’re an English speaker – but trust us, it’s worth it.

Chak De! India is available to watch on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and Google Play.