Dangal - masterfully combines excellent writing with great performances

• It is rare to see a sports movie that sheds a light on what it takes to be a great sports person. Most sports movies ask you to suspend disbelief as the screen writer types in a cheat code to let the underdog win. The training sequences are written beautifully. You see how the underdog transforms into a champion. All it takes to convince one is just the dialogue, "See you at 5 am tomorrow".
• Surprisingly for a super star driven movie, there are times when Aamir Khan remains in the periphery. The movie is about his character's dream, but the driving forces are his daugthers. The terrific ensemble cast carries the film. When you are not subconcisouly evaluating dialogues for plot (I did not want to scan at the bottom of the scene every time), and only rely on performance of actors to get the emotional cues, it becomes even more engrossing. Even if the actor appears for just one scene, like the child bride.
• What you see in the children is what you see in the adult actors. There are several scenes where Babita has to watch the drama from the sidelines. Both the actors playing Babita manage to hit the same note when expressing her tentativeness.
• The child actors excel in comic timing as well. Comedy is one of Dangal's strong points. It is not like they are completely reliant on dialogues. When Geeta wins an older age group championship, you see a banner that reflects that by simply striking out "sub" in sub-junior.
• Not to mention the fact that the roles are physically demanding. It is hard to imagine what it took for professional actors (Fatima Sana Sheik played Kamal Hassan's daughter in Chachi 420) to come across as convincing in the wrestling scenes.
• Ritika Singh (of Irudhi Sutru), a professional martial artist was impressive with her one handed push ups, but was severely limited as an actor. And she managed to get a special mention at the National Awards. Going by that standard, it is not a strech to imagine the women here winning all the acting awards.
• Direction is top notch. While the father is desperate for a son, he seems very distant in relation to his daughters, and you never the father and a daughter together in the same frame. The first time you see them together, (you see him splitting a sweet when his cousin has another son and giving it to the daughters) he is embracing his sleeping daughter, only after he has embraced the idea that a daughter can also fulfill his dream.
• The same goes for action choreography. Wrestling scenes in the first half are set in montages, and comedy is neatly blended into these scenes. In the second half, wrestling scenes are woven effectively into intense dramatic scenes where the father takes on the daughter. They stand out in wrestling matches, where the voice over commentary comes together with the staging to create quite an atmosphere. Rarely has action been used this effectively to build tension.
• Many sports films fall into the pitfall taking drama all the way into a sporting finale, but Dangal plays its cards with some restraint. The father is marooned in a far away room, and how he comes to know of the result is even more dramatic. And is staged with some restraint too. (The audience on the other hand decided that they have to stand and observe).
• The way the role of the coach affects the drama is perhaps Dangal's weakest link. The character had some promise initially but slowly slides into a mean caricature. This has not worked in several film in recent memory (Listen to the theme music of one such character in Kabali, and you will see how dated even the background feels).
• May be you need to invest a lot more in the other jealous character for these conflicts to come out well. For every Aadulakam (the director introduced the subject to a film festival audience by posing "What would an Alpha male do when an upstart shows up in his territory?") or even Aurangazeb, there are several films where a poorly written character's meanness takes the film down (Irudhi Sutru has two such characters). In Dangal, it is a contrived means to an worthwhile end.
• Sports has in-built drama, and cinema can easily build on this. Opening and climax cricket sequences in Chennai-28 are good examples. Sports that don't have a wide following are hard to follow, and as result harder to create a drama out of. Some films try to inject the dramatic tension in the plot into the sport (Irudhi Sutru), or have no meaningful drama outside of the sporting action (Vallinam). It is hard to do just one well. Dangal manages to create and sustain two separate dramatic threads and switches between in the climax in a riveting fashion.
• Production values set a really high bar. The set, costume and more importantly minor characters make you feel the rustic nature of the setting. I am not sure if there ever was a time when big Bollywood money was put to better use.