Monday, January 03, 2005

Swades - Review

Swades: We the people

A movie from Ashutosh Gowariker and I knew even before I landed in the theater that it’s not going to be ‘yet another Bollywood movie’. Swades, as a movie, I would say is certainly different. However, if you are reading this review, to find out if you should go watch the movie or not, the verdict is – “You should go see it”.

Swades – is the story of a NASA engineer coming back to India is search of his childhood nanny, Kaveri Ma, and then being touched by his experiences in a small village - Charanpur - which gets him to think. At some level, probably Ashutosh Gowariker believes and drives home the message - that we, the as citizens of India, have to do something as our part about this country to make things happen. However, I felt Gowariker has lost track of his message, entangled in the sheer numbers and astronimity of the issues gripping India today – Illiteracy, caste system, poor power infrastructure, corruption and the (clichéd) brain-drain. To handle a myriad of these issues, and to logically drive home a point I felt Swades could have done with a lot more intelligent editing. Coz, the movie is too long, a little flat at times, and when songs break out in the second half out of the blue, you can hear people in the hall sigh, yawn and hoot.

However, the Gowariker magic of the protagonist cajoling the ignorant/adamant villagers to be motivated to help themselves and better their village still worked as well as it did in Lagaan. The emotional scenes where Mohan Bharagava is moved by what is the state of rural India was very well handled. And the dilemma of Mohan Bhargava is something a lot of educated Indians can associate with. Gowariker should be appreciated for his refreshing subtlety in narration.

Gowariker once again proved that casting is as important to the movie as the script. Shahrukh Khan (as Mohan Bhargava) has acted extremely well - no hamming, no over acting, just the regular intelligent thoughtful educated Indian guy - the idealism of Mohan Bhargava shows through. Gayatri Joshi is brilliant in her debut too. She looks very much the part she is playing. Actually, all characters have acted extremely well. In that sense it feels very real.

Music is just above average. I felt the charm in the music is lost mainly due to the misplaced because of some poor editing. However, I liked "Chala Chal Rahi" and "Yeah tara, woh tara...", and background score by A. R. Rehman ranged from being good to excellent in some scenes. Javed Akhtar as ever has written some enchanting lyrics. Cinematography is good too; it is a good looking movie without making you awkwardly feel that too much of effort has gone into to making it look good. (Like the movie “Devdas”!!!) On the whole, Swades could have been a lot better. That was my first reaction when I left the hall. And yet, somehow, I can't stop thinking about it. It stirs the Mohan Bhargava inside you because sometimes the Honesty of the expression is more important than the Polish in expression.

1 comment:

Santosh PM said...

Gee, this is not the first time you are writing a movie review, I am sure! Apart from the technical aspects of movies, this movie did seem to have a fanatic "mera bharat mahan" attitude to it, however much the maker has tried to conceal it.

ANyways, cool review. Expect to see more stuff around...
Santosh