Rang De Basanti
I had loved Rang De Basanti when I saw it a couple of years back... I am reminded of the movie again today because I saw Shashi Tharoor's tweet on twitter.com in response to someone else's tweet. This is what it said " ShashiTharoor RT @bapoorow: Rang De Basanti was a bold honest attempt at inspiring us. (ST:terrible movie,Aamir's only bad1.Foolishly glorified violence) "... I was actually a little shocked and angry (being a perpetual Aamir Khan fan and what not). It also reminded me of someone else who had a similar opinion when I saw the movie. And my argument is the same as it was then. If you watch the movie carefully you will notice that the main characters in the movie aren't really shown as very mature individuals.... For example, Aamir Khan's character has graduated 5 years back and still doesn't seem to have grown much. He lives in that safe environment where everyone knows him and doesn't want to venture out.... He says to Sue "people in college think that one day I will do something", but he doesn't really try to do anything... They look glamorous to us because they are heroes, their characters are fun and adventurous, but never really portrayed as intelligent and capable of deep thinking or analysis. For me the path that they choose doesn't seem obvious or apparent, but at the same time, it doesn't seem unjustified either. I can believe that these characters can react in this manner given the influence of the play that they are working on and the unfortunate incident that they are faced with. If you take out all the glamor from these characters and the "phoren" girlfriend, these characters remind me of numerous people that you see on a daily basis on the streets of our metro or in colleges doing absolutely nothing and whiling away their time, eve-teasing girls. Such people who may then end up jobless are easy recruits for political parties to create havoc in the city for political reason under the premise of religion. If he was not Aamir Khan, not wearing those fancy designer jeans, not riding that awesome bike, looking uber kool with his "gori mem", I can see how he can do what he did in the movie. I think the characters were very well developed. You just have to pay attention. In ST's defense though, I doubt how many people give so much thought to a movie (esplly Hindi movie) and it can certainly glorify violence and I can definitely see tons of youngsters (similar to the characters in the movie) walking away with a completely wrong message....
Comments
I feel ST is more of a Gandhian and doesnt approve the violent method of protesting against injustice. I am with him, there are methods to get justice in Democracy and its Judiciary.It's not always quick (and in India's case it's mostly agonizingly slow). But I would still rather believe in Democracy. But there are many people who believe otherwise (e.g. Naxalities). Yesterday's terrorists are considered martyr today. So the jury is still out.
Anyways, the script demanded the ending. I cant think of any other way the movie could have ended. But people need to think for themselves. Which you have rightly pointed out, that they dont....
So making such movies can be considered irresponsible (by ST). I wouldn't, I loved the movie..I feel it inspires to stand up against injustice more than the violent means to do it.