Making of a revolution Rang De Basanti Starring Aamir Khan, Siddharth, Shraman Joshi, Kunal Kapoor, Atul Kulkarni, Soha Ali Khan, Madhavan Showing at Inox (City Centre and Forum) ONE expected Rang De Basanti to look good, rather posh, given that several top-of-the-line advertising professionals – lyrics and dialogue-writer Prasoon Joshi, story and screenplay writer Kamlesh Pandey, cinematographer Binod Pradhan and director Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra – have pooled their skills to make it. Thanks to their combined efforts, the often-perceived-to-be-matter-of-fact and mechanical Delhi and its suburbs are invested with so much character. Although the long expanse of mustard fields beside the air strip from where fighter planes take off looks slightly typical and the lone sequence of community garba dancing in colour-coordinated costumes rather decorative, scenes featuring the ruins of the abandoned fortress, Janpath by night and the alleyways leading to Aslam’s home in Old Delhi make one want to find out more about the often-misunderstood metropolis. But quaint images, peppy music and clever dialogues are only the lesser achievements of a film which has tried to address a fundamental question: if the culture of protest is really dead. And the answer, predictably, is a resounding no. When flight lieutenant Ajay Rathore is killed while flying an outdated MiG, his five friends — Delhi University students Diljeet, Karan, Sukhi, Aslam and Laxman Pandey – are both shocked and angry. A media expose puts the defence minister in the dock, insisting that he ought to have phased out the fighter planes that had run their course before more innocent lives were lost. When the late Rathore’s mother, fiance Soniya, his friends and supporters put up a peaceful demonstration near India Gate, a psyched defence minister orders forcible eviction, injuring hundreds (real-life incidents of the establishment pouncing on defenceless protesters in recent times such as the lathicharge on employees of Honda at Gurgaon come to mind). The bereaved and wounded mother goes into a coma and Rathore is branded a careless pilot by the defence minister, desperate to whitewash his own image. That’s when the friends, suitably charged and inspired, having just acted as armed revolutionaries in a documentary on the freedom struggle in 1930s India, decide to eliminate the defence minister and expose the politician-arms dealer nexus once and for all. But challenging the establishment, as it was in pre-Independence India, entails paying a heavy price and the young rebels in this film are not scared to look death in the eye. Made within the familiar parameters of mainstream Indian cinema – showcasing the country’s colourful variety of locales, music (where bhangra beats are happily in sync with rock, sometimes merging into one another), ties forged against caste and community and the whole gamut of overflowing emotions – this is a film that also pushes the limits of the audience’s expectation. Instead of opting for a satisfying end where the guilty are punished and the brave rewarded, it goes for a more realistic one, movingly tragic but not without a glimmer of hope. In the very last sequence, even as the comrades are holed in inside the All India Radio office and the paramilitary come to get them (the Jallianwallah Bagh of 21st-century India), Karan – the quiet, brooding rich businessman’s son whose ambition once was to take the next flight out of India as soon as he was through with university — talks to the nation’s public through an interactive broadcast, explaining their act, owning up their mistakes. Aamir Khan as the rumbustious ladies’ man Diljeet, secretly scared of leaving the precincts of the university five years after having passed out is, as always, a delight to watch, primarily because of his amazing energy level. And Kunal Kapoor as the lanky, soft and poetic Aslam is endearing. Alice Patten as the gritty filmmaker from London bears her part convincingly. But the two scene-stealers in this film are Atul Kulkarni as Laxman Pandey, an indoctrinated, selfless saffron party worker who turns around when the world he had reposed faith in collapses; and Siddharth as Karan. The latter hardly ever looks one in the eye, but when he does, facing the jailor in his role as Bhagat Singh, minutes before he goes to the gallows, the spark in those eyes are unforgettable. — Chitralekha Basu
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