Movie Review: Rang De Basanti

Note: This review contains 90% imaginary content, and any relationship to anyone living or dead (including Bhagat Singh) is purely coincidental.

Every once in a while you find a movie being made in some corner of the world, that stirs your conscience. These movies make you wonder what you are doing in life, studying for degrees, taking up jobs, getting married, getting laid, and retiring, and fading away from memory.

The last such movie that I saw was Motorcycle Diaries. This time, it is Rang de Basanti, the multi-starrer with Aamir Khan in the lead.

***********SPOILER ALERT*******

The story is beautifully woven around a foreigner who comes to India to make a movie about Bhagat Singh. She has a historical connection, being the granddaughter of the jailor of Bhagat Singh. She also has a connection with Aamir Khan's tongue and throat, but we will get to that later.

She meets up with a friend in India (Soha Ali Khan Pataudi), and ends up meeting the three heroes. They also meet up with Ajay (Madhavan), Soha's fiancee, who is a fighter pilot in the army. After a bit of time wasting where they try the extremely innovative humor of a foreigner who understands good Hindi and the hero not knowing this fact, they get down to making the movie. As it proceeds, the thoughts of the "boys" (and Aamir) change, and they begin to understand the sacrifices that went into making such a great country. (However, they fail to understand why they shouldn't jump into knee deep water from a height of a hundred feet)

After some wonderful scenes about Bhagat Singh (the fifth time on Indian screens, if you can count Bobby Deol as Bhagat Singh), their world changes irrevocably, and they get down to making a difference in the India that they live in.

After a while, the line between the past and the present blurs, and Bhagat Singh and Karan (Sidharth), Azad and DJ (Aamir) start making appearances sometimes in the same scene. At one point, they stare at each other in the face and start smiling. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the make up artist for their hard work and dedication.

I won't tell you more, because I promised that to Soha when she gave me one of her shy smiles in the song "Tu bin bataaye". The best thing about the movie is definitely Soha. She delivers a matured performance, and her best scene is definitely the one in which Madhavan proposes to her, and she bursts out crying at the very thought. Tears stream down her face, and she then begins to pretend that she's crying because she's happy. The worst thing about the movie is Madhavan's wife, because she seems to be feeding him so much that he himself looks like a hot air balloon ready to take flight, and not the pilot.

Sidharth gives a terrific controlled performance, but I get the feeling the control was more to do with diarrhea, than any substantial acting talent. Atul Kulkarni takes off from where he left in Chandni Bar, delivering a good realistic performance, while raising anti-Pakistan slogans and abusing the party that he is a part of(clearly a hindutva party whose name starts with B, ends with P, and has a J in the middle).

The foreigner, Alice Pattern, exhibits fantastic command over Hindi, while abusing her boss with a particularly hurtful gaali before leaving London for India. She also exhibits fantastic control on her tongue, especially when it's in Aamir's mouth, thus achieving instant stardom in India. Her role is also well portrayed, with her mouthing complex dialogues such as"mujhe radio station le chalo"(take me to the radio station)& "teri maa ki ankh"(your mother's eye).

The climax transcends from the real into the imaginary plane, and for a while you keep hoping that it is all a dream, or a bad idea, and they're just going to wake up and tank it, but they don't! Anyway, this is just about 10% of the movie, and the rest is beautifully built up, directed and acted. Ajay Devgan also lands a fantastic performance as Bhagat Singh, but its not in this movie, hence I digress.

AR Rahman, as I have said before, delivers a terrific score. The music blends in perfectly with the movie too, and the direction has a lot to do with that. None of the songs are the original Bollywood foreign-location-shake-that-booty numbers. All of them fit into the context so well, that you begin to appreciate the music much better after watching the movie.

Arguably, the best scene of the movie is the one in which, after Ajay dies, his mother (Waheeda Rahman) opens the door, and two Air Force men are standing outside in their uniform, and they have with them a trunk carrying the final belongings of Ajay. The background score (Luka Chuppi), the sight of the mother staggering onto the floor for the first time, and the very sight of the two men in uniform, standing in attention as if on duty, the entire scene is overwhelming.

Overall, Shravan's rating: 4/5.