Trying to Understand a Broken Masterpiece

Rating: 6/10 (24 June 2008)

The Rang de Basanti experience basically went as follows: I was enjoying the first part of the story and the music and plot was decent. I liked the cast of characters (most of them) and there were little quips that kept me interested and amused. Up to the intermission, it was a good story.
Then....
After the intermission, everything fell apart: not in a good way. I literally had to go back and watch a good portion of the movie again (20 mins) because I didn't quite understand what happened. From the beginning of the story, the characters were making a movie about revolutionaries from the mid nineteenth century. Then, the engaged guy (Ajay) dies and a bunch of fun, easygoing college students become sadistic killers... the two plots didn't match up at all. A bunch of kids were making a movie about the revolution, and then, most conveniently, their best friend dies, which results in their protests, which results in their beatings, and their plot to assassinate the defense minister... Its like the makers had two storyboards and couldn't decide which one to use so they took the first half of the one and the second half of the other and combined them. The result was completely exasperating, everything went downhill too fast: the first part of the movie was too slow and the second half deteriorated far too fast. (the exposition was not very exhilarating vs. the climaxes and resolution which were far fetched and a little overdone.) Instead, the story should have been about either the first part or the second part: not both. In other words, the story should have elaborated on the movie that the characters were producing and perhaps should have given a back story of each of the characters as actors to show how they were each related to the revolution; or, the story should have started to finish accordingly with the second part: the characters would not be making a movie, there would be no acting or auditions: instead, the story would elaborate solely on the cultural lives of each character and emphasize their innocence and happiness and show how government tears them apart through death and destruction. Both of these would achieve the same theme that highlights the corruption of government and the fact that something needs to be done.
To elaborate more on the theme: the main message of the movie was very wrong. It pretty much advertised, ergo, advocated a bloody revolution on the grounds that it would shake the country into awakening. This is outrageous... the story literally preaches bloodshed... Yes, the government is corrupt and will readily cause bloodshed: but this is the main reason why the people have to act peaceably until they are able to change government through their own work within it: by protesting, they are only demanding change that the government has already refused to give: it is only through mass active participation in government that major change can occur. This was a hidden moral heard only as Karan stated it during the final radio broadcast urging citizens to participate in govt. This theme should have been highlighted much more. I think that the main message of this movie for its people should have been a peaceful revolution through intelligent means: this is a more appropriate idea that ties in with the characters identities as students and would have made the story more memorable and worthwhile. I read about the movie on the worldwide scale: I believe it didn't really attain abundant international acclaim because of the plot and story insufficiencies aforementioned. I think that the story had potential to overrun even Richard Attenborough's Ghandi, but didn't do so because it contained conflicting plot lines: it tripped over itself about halfway through the race and never regained momentum.
But it wasn't all that bad. As I said before, I enjoyed the character traits of the Desi people portrayed. It was good to give brown people some kind of personality besides engineers and doctors with funny accents. I think that the cultural aspects of the movie were outstanding. I also liked the jokes that occasionally denounced the overdone Bollywood tradition. (the only reason we plant trees in this country is so that we can dance around them)
All in all, the movie broke the standpoint of the traditional Indian movie: it was vibrant, pseudo-western, and contained some pleasantly funny jokes. The reason I wrote so much about this movie is that I had a lot of hope for it: before watching, I knew that it broke away from the typical Indian movie melodrama and actually contained substance. After watching however, I realized that it was hopelessly jumbled and contained conflicting and unrelated story lines and themes and even pointless melodrama of its own. In the end, the culture stands out as the most appealing aspect while the rest of the story crumbles around it. Its sad because the back story actually contained so much more than what the movie itself actually conveyed to the bewildered watcher: it was teeming with potential that, regrettably, was never really used.