Multi-Story Film Failure

Rang De Basanti - Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

 3/10

This is a really interesting film with some great performances. The creative team, led by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag & Delhi-6), are given too much leeway by the producers.

They try to frame, what could have been a brilliant film, with a haphazard back-story, which is interesting, but as a film it’s poor. Almost all of the problems with this film stem from the back-story.

Two Stories - Completely Separate

The framing back-story is 1 hour 28 mins long. The second story is 1 hour 10mins. You can almost cut the film in two at this point. They are two completely separate films, and should have been.

The first story is about Sue, Alice Patten (Our Girl & Downton Abbey), making a documentary about revolutionary heroes from India’s past. This is an interesting concept of interlacing the actual documentary with the making of it. I’ll address the multiple issues that this film has in the next section

The second story is about the cast of Sue’s film taking up arms against corruption of the Indian government after the death of their friend Ajay Rathod, Madhavan (3 Idiots & Saala Khadoos). This film is way more interesting and way better written. It is tight and intelligent. The story hits all the right notes at the right times. If I was reviewing just this story it would be getting a very

Story Issues

There is no opposing force to the story of Sue’s film making. Originally it is her TV studio when they cancel the film but she just continues on her own. There are then problems making the film but they are just that problems. A story needs to have a force of opposition that is actively trying to defeat our hero and Sue doesn’t have this.

The Prize and Price (explained in this article) are off for Sue’s story. This prize is: Sue gets to make a film. The price is: the lives of her cast. The scales don’t really balance here – you feel like they paid too much to succeed.

Care is another big issue here. The story is really just about Sue throwing a tantrum about her film getting cancelled.

There is also no resolution to the story. You guess that it got made because the completed product is interlaced throughout the first part of the film and there is a screening of the film. But because we now move onto the second, much more exciting story, this feels very anti-climatic.

Songs

It’s impossible to write about a Bollywood film without talking about the songs. The songs are mostly good as they fit the world. This is up until the scene with the arc de triumph at this point it doesn’t fit the world anymore. Whenever Bollywood does this it breaks suspension of disbelief and it is unforgivable.

There is a song at a temple that the characters are all singing so it fits the real world perfectly. This is how to fit songs into the story.

Action Well Choreographed

Throughout the film the action is well choreographed. It is easy to watch and understand what is going on. There is one scene that is particularly brilliant. Ramprasad, Atul Kulkatni (Natarang & Hey Ram), & Ashfaqullah, Kunal Kappor (Devadas & Meenaxi: Tale of 3 Cities) are captured and the action tells the tale perfectly.

Over The Top & Awkward

The song at the temple is punctuated by a fly-over of fighter jets. They dust the colours of the Indian flag and this is a bit much.

There is a scene in a club after the screening the film which feels contrived and awkward.

The police brutality at the sit-in is supposed to parallel the colonial brutality but it misses the mark. That was then and this is now. I don’t need to give you a history lesson but we all know that there are different standards in the modern world.

Rang De Basanti's Other Problems

There are some sections of the film where a hand-held camera overlays the main film. This doesn’t add anything and it feels like Binod Pradhan (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag & Devdas), the Director of Photography, was saying: “Look at what I can do.” Not impressive.

There is a scene set in an amphitheatre called the ‘Classroom’ that has water pooling in its lower levels. The characters both stand in it and jump from a great height into it, diving below its surface, so the depth of the water is variable depending on the action that the director wanted to happen. You cannot do this.