Rang De Basanti - My take

Saw what has been touted as the movie of the year and it fell far below my expectations.

Firstly, just too many stereotypes in the movie – a rich kid who has no compunctions in doling out dad’s money to help his “friends” and expectedly has a love-hate, tension-filled relationship with the corrupt father; a Muslim family suffering from a terrible sense of loss of belonging in a country increasingly seen as a Hindu land; a party worker with obvious and open references to BJP (including the Modi look-alike party leader); the goody-goody perfect son who is all ready to lay down his life for the country. Oh puhleez! And there is more – a number of scenes that result in an absolute sense of déjà vu – the bloopers with the foreign lady, assuming she doesn’t understand a word of Hindi, the way tension is depicted in the rich household and among the Muslim family members and so forth. This should be reason enough for the movie not to click.

But the reason why the movie failed to touch a chord, IMHO, is because it fails to convince. I refuse to believe that the 20-something youth of the present day India are as apathetic and escapist as they are shown in the film; the righteous indignation of the few misguided youth inspired by the acts of past revolutionaries was just not persuasive. Yes, there have been some peaceful protests in the country that have been brutally lathi charged (I myself was a witness to one in Hyderabad when I was a journalist); but lathi charged to the extent that someone goes into a coma, especially in this day and age when the media coverage itself can ensure that certain uncomfortable questions were at least raised if not answered, just does not hold any water!

I can understand they being angry, incensed at the “unfairness” of it all. But just go on a rampage and look at killing someone, even if that someone is a corrupt politician (ironically, this is never completely “established” in the film – his evasion of the issue and refusal to accept any moral responsibility is enough to see him culpable of the “crime”) does not seem reasonable enough – especially not to a band of youth who eventually try to “reason” it out on AIR why they had done it. Even then never once do they really feel sorry for taking the law into their hands; their only regret is that despite taking the law into their hands their message didn’t really get through to the masses – so, there has to be more violence and a final awakening of the entire nation screaming into television sets that they will take this “fight” forward. Fight – that it what this literally turns into, not some kind of a revolution sweeping in the winds of change.

And in all this I believe the actual message of the movie is lost; the message voiced in a bar over a couple of drinks by an Air Force officer ready to do all for the country – “If you want to do something for this country and change the system, join the system; try and change it from within.” Yes, it is repeated towards the end by Karan Singhania; but by then that is what it sounds like – plain parroting of the words. And somewhere along the way the actual cause – to wage a war against corruption and corrupt politicians – is really lost.

In all this what is a saving grace are the actors – especially Siddharth and Kunal Kapoor, who surprise by their restrained, stellar performances. Alice Patten is very good, while Soha Ali Khan was sufficient, even though she can do with some lessons in acting. Atul Kulkarni, expectedly, is brilliant and Sharman Joshi is the surprise of the pack. It was Aamir Khan who was a disappointment though. He looked too old for the role, and sometimes the carefree flippancy, earnestness, and cheerful extroversion seems an overdone act. Where he redeems himself, however, is in the scenes where he reveals his insecurities – those are indeed a class act. Much has been said about “revival” of A R Rahman as a composer in this film; I, personally, however was very disappointed with the score – it seemed as yet another aspect of the film that just doesn’t strike a chord.

Finally, pray can someone enlighten me on this – in our movies why is it that it is always a personal tragedy that becomes the catalyst for any kind of awakening? Does that mean that if something doesn’t touch me at a personal level, I will continue not to care? To me that is a scarier thought.

Update: Read this. A much better-analyzed and written review than mine. And it encapsulates my feelings after watching the movie really well.