Irrational Exuberance

A few of my friends who had come earlier to my place to hang out with me last month and they made me roam around almost the entire city to get the audio cassette/Cd’s of the movie and then I did not understand the reason for them to be so upbeat about it. Then I happened to watch the trailers of the movie which interested me a lot. Further I heard from many friends who watched it tell me that it is an absolute must see. I also happened to skim through Rashmi’s reviews which she blogged.

Then I watched the movie yesterday at Rex theatre in Brigade Road and I must say It was an absolutely exhilirating experience, It is after so many years that I have watched
such a good movie. The last such good movie that I watched was ‘Indian’ by Kamal Haasan( it was dubbed as ‘Hindustani’ in Hindi). These two movies could be categorized as a seperate genre of movies which really plasters a serious message to the audience but without putting in a lot of cognitive load by fusing a lot of youthful fun & frollic elements. Rang De Basanti is not one of those typical bollywood movies which I come to loathe which would have a hero & heroine who would have a fetish for each other which is mistakenly portrayed as love (the holy grail) , they initially struggle to get together but the end of the movie is “happily ever after” situation. A successful bollywood (or tollywood, mollywood etc) movie has abused this theme for I don’t how many years.Their assumption ( which seems to factually supported ) is that Indian audience don’t like movies where the hero dies.
Thank goodness that Rang De Basanti does not have such a sucker element in it. I will highlight some aspects which I really I liked.

An epic(rather a true) hero is known by his actions and not by his results. And infact what anyone obtains as result are dictated by games played by randomness (which some also call as luck) This movie has illustrated well this fundamental fact of life.
I liked the brilliant act of cinematography of going back & forth in the timeline and weaving the lives of Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru and the current day youths i.e Aamir Khan & his friends.

Another real hard reality which was portrayed well was that awakening really does not happen to anyone until it personally costs something. Also to kickstart and external nudge or spark is necessary.

General Mckiney in the movie was portrayed as a man with good soul no doubt but he did his deeds as he was duty bound but this begs a larger question which has relevance to everyone even today. Was it more ethical for the general to obey his high command orders (which is the duty of a soldier/general) or heed to his conscience which clearly told him that it was unethical to treat another human being this way.

The raw passion of youth displayed in this movie after the heros get awakened was just unparallel, from whatever movies I have seen so far this display of passion was so vigorous.
This movie surely sends a serious shockwave to the current young generation and as Rashmi said if this does not awaken people there is little chance that anything else will.

I have already written quite a bit about and I won’t write more lest this acts as a spoiler those who have’nt seen it. But I will write this sum up phrase for the movie which gets surmised in a wonderful phrase that I came across quite some time ago ( I don’t have the source , I will link when I get it) and it is “Nothing Great has ever been achieved without Irrational Exuberance”. Rang De Basanti portrays a testimonial to it.