Rang De Basanti - Movie Review

Published: December 14, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Aamir Khan, Alice Patten, Soha Ali Khan, Siddharth Narayan, Kunal Kapoor, Sharman Joshi, Atul Kulkarni, R. Madhavan

The film’s title means “Paint It Saffron”—saffron, one of the three colors in the Indian flag, symbolizes sacrifice, and the narrative revolves around this theme, but here, the sacrifice is not noble—as the film suggests—but a foolish waste. The film is well-made and well-acted, but its romanticization of futile violence for wrongheaded reasons makes it impossible to take it seriously.

 

A cute, blond British filmmaker, Sue (Alice Patten), wants to make a movie about five violent Indian revolutionaries who were executed for treason by the British in the 1920s and 30s, but she can’t get funding for her project. “Gandhi sells,” her bosses say to explain their rejection of her topic, and Sue doesn’t stop for a second to think why that might be—and neither do the makers of Rang De Basanti. So she goes to India to make the movie on her own and enlists the help of her friend, Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), who lives there.

 

When Sue meets Sonia’s gregarious male friends—D.J. (Aamir Khan), Karan (Siddharth Narayan), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), and Sukhi (Sharman Joshi)—she casts them as the revolutionaries. She needs one more actor and picks Laxman (Atul Kulkarni), who belongs to a Hindu fundamentalist political group and has bullied the other four in the past for their Westernized ways. With the exception of Laxman, the men are fun-loving and they care nothing about the subject of the film. Sue pressures them to take their roles seriously, but they are politically apathetic, think patriotism is boring, and aren’t proud of India because of its problems. Ajay (R. Madhavan), Sonia’s fiancé and a military pilot, is the only one in their social group who’s willing to dedicate his life to his country.

 

As the men get to know their characters, they start to sympathize with their beliefs and actions, and when calamity—caused by government corruption—strikes their circle of friends, it pushes them over the edge into violent radicalism, which is a pretty big leap for a bunch of self-centered, overgrown adolescents. The film makes them out to be heroes, but they’re nothing but misguided idiots who needlessly throw their lives away—like so many young men who embrace violence and achieve nothing by it.

 

In the end, Sue is just another foreigner who—despite her good intentions—messes up the lives of Indians with her meddling. It would have been better for everyone if she’d just stayed home—and better for audiences if they did the same.

Rang De Basanti is rated Skip.

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