I had recently been reading Shashi Tharoor’s An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India when I came across the film Gold on Amazon Prime. The combination of timing and subject matter made it feel like required viewing.
The film depicts India’s first Olympic gold medal as a free country. Akshay Kumar plays a sports manager whose career is defined by his determination to see India win. The character Pritam — based on the legendary Dhyan Chand, played here by Kunal Kapoor — is the heart of the story.
India dominated hockey internationally from 1928 to 1980. Dhyan Chand was well known as the reason. The film does justice to that legacy while also handling the entire India-Pakistan narrative in a way that is genuinely heart-rending — presenting an alternate historical perspective that I found moving.
The story also examines the role of administration in ensuring that sport has enough backing. Political support and institutional funding determine whether talent gets a platform. That tension feels very contemporary.
Cricket’s dominance over hockey as our national conversation is something the film implicitly questions. Gold deserves to be seen — not only for the acting but for the narrative it carries.