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Can an Aamir Khan film ever arrive in our midst without a huge buzz? The star-actor’s latest film, Rang De Basanti, like Lagaan, Dil Chahta Hai and Mangal Pandey – The Rising before it, has been preceded by more than its share of media hype. Unexpected controversies have erupted over the film, first with the defence forces and then with the animal welfare board joining issue with it. And that has fetched Rang De Basanti much more media space than anticipated. The Central Board of Film Certification has given its go-ahead to Rang De Basanti and so has the Army after a special screening organised for the military top brass, including defence minister Pranab Mukherjee. But the film has now run into trouble with Maneka Gandhi and her ilk for the way in which it has used horses in a riding sequence allegedly shot without the necessary clearances. From the looks of it, Rakeysh Mehra’s new film seems to possess enough steam of its own to be able travel a fair distance at the box office. His big screen debut, Aks, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Manoj Bajpai and Nandita Das, was a convoluted mess for all its visual flourishes and narrative twists. The fate that befell it at the box office wasn’t surprising. Rang De Basanti is Mehra’s chance to make amends for that failure. With actors of the calibre of Aamir Khan, Atul Kulkarni and Madhavan playing key roles in the film and a storyline that sounds pretty original, he might have a winner on his hands provided the film does make it to the theatres while it is still a talking point around the country. A portion of Rang De Basanti is reportedly inspired by the death of young Air Force officer Abhijit Gadgil in a MiG crash. Indeed, one of the film’s central characters, who is engaged to the film’s heroine, Soha Ali Khan, is an Air Force pilot, but this film doesn’t proffer your average narrative about a patriotic Indian willing to lay down his life for the cause of the nation. It raises deeper questions. Rang De Basanti is far more complex than any patriotic film you might have seen in recent years. It is really a film about today’s youth, a generation that is far removed from the spirit embodied by the men and women who fought for India’s freedom. An idealistic young British filmmaker (played by Alice Patten) stumbles upon the diaries of her grandfather, who had served in the Indian police force during the freedom struggle. On the pages of the diaries, she reads about the exploits of freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and their contemporaries. Enthused, she decides to probe their lives further by making a film on them. She lands in India with the intention of making a film about the revolutionaries. She is low on funds, so she enlists five Delhi University students to essay various roles in her film, but it is a tough call for the actors because they have no affinity with the freedom fighters they are supposed to portray. As the past and the present converge, the youngsters dig beep into themselves in order to find a connection with the revolutionaries who gave India independence. Rang De Basanti appears to deal with the theme of patriotism in a manner quite removed from Bollywood conventions. It projects patriotism as an internal national necessity, not just as a coat of arms worn to scare off enemies on the country’s borders. In that sense, it captures the current mood of the nation: it depicts love for the nation as an urge to look inwards and shed one’s me-first ideology, not as a mere trigger for hatred for another nation. Rang de Basanti could indeed add a new twist to Bollywood’s
engagement with chest-thumping patriotism. And for that alone, it would
be a worth a viewing. |