Rang De Basanti

So at last I watched Rang De Basanti. Don’t really know what colors it gave other than the color of blood. The film did provide some cherishable feelings to start with. It always feels great when a foreigner comes and says “Payi Lago Maaji” and believes in “Mera Bharath Mahaan”.

We could visualize Indians getting united against the Brits. But here, the Indians were united for the sake of a Brit when Lakshman and Aslam acted like being together before the foreigner’s eyes. The style of getting the past and the present on parallel was great. Yes during the climax or in the scenes when they die or get caught it is emotive. But when they mix the scenes, sometimes the emotions are lost in the comics of the next scene.

The story starts with, Then I met the third type of men verse and ends with the same. Bhagat Singh and Karan Singhania are on the same plane. Without much of criticism about the comparison, Bhagath Singh who handed himself to the British and was ready for death then was laughing when he approached death. But how could Amir khan after seeing the death of his friend and Siddharth afford to laugh at that moment. They came to surrender; they did not expect to be shot dead. Probably to get the comparison through the director wanted them to laugh rather unfittingly.

Not much of time has been devoted to the MIG crash, and even the last clip about MIGs crash is out in quick time, before we could finish reading it. Probably political pulls would have been detrimental to the film from showing some more parts of it.

Comparing General Dyre and the Defence Minister was like hitting at the Bull’s eye. Truth to the core, what difference exists between the Brits and these self centered politicians of India? And the VHP was shown in some full light. True at the grass roots there are people who really believe in the ideas and at the top are the money makers. And these people deceive the grass roots. But why does every patriotic film want to arouse Hindu-Muslim unity rather than nationhood.

It was good to see that youngsters who are just drunkards and irresponsible could suddenly turn it on and take on the government. The sense of confidence was great.
But strange for every foreigner who comes here believing in our great tradition we only destroy their hopes and awaken them saying all those that you read were not about us. We are not in anyway resembling our past. We are not even aware of them. If we believe this is our society of the day we really owe a lot to change it.