Rang De Basanti [2006]
Director: Rakesh Omprakash Mehra
Actor: Aamir Khan, Siddharth, Sharman Joshi, Kunal Kapoor, Atul Kulkarni, Alice Patten, Soha Ali Khan, Madhavan
This story is, primarily, about two people; DJ (Aamir Khan) and Sue. DJ is a college student who, together with his friends, lead a relatively easy life, filled with partying and having fun. Sue is a documentarist at the BBC who stumbles across the diary of her grandfather, who served in the British army and was stationed in India where he was meant to keep the peace, and decides to devote a film to his memoirs.
The memoirs of Sue’s grandfather tell of his struggle with local insurgents fighting for an independent India, their capture and subsequent execution. He had come to respect the insurgents to such an extent that he was left awe-struck and deeply troubled by his task of executing them. The memoirs are filled with praise for these insurgents’ courage and ability to self-sacrifice, and Sue is inspired to tell their tale. When she finds that the BBC refuses to fund her project, she travels to India and tries to make the film on her own dime.
Sue meets with her good friend Sonia in Delhi and they hold auditions, which turns out to be a big disaster. The money for talented actors just isn’t there, and just when Sue is with her back to a wall, she is invited to an evening of fun with Sonia and her friends, lead by the charismatic and seemingly care-free DJ. DJ and his friends seem care-free, but are all, in one way or another, struggling with the deep-rooted social problems India; corruption, oppression, religious discrimination, etc. Hanging out with them, Sue is struck by the parallels between the problems of the past and the present, and she sees in DJ and his friends the actors of all the parts of the insurgency group that she needs. Just as Sue gets them to agree, disaster strikes the close-knit group of friends, which forces them to take matters into their own hands, try to force a positive change in their society, and become the men and women they were meant to play in Sue’s film.
While the film has all the traditional trappings of a Bollywood film (overacting, singing and dancing, etc.), it exercises them in a way that makes this film easily accessible for people who normally hate Bollywood films (like me.) The acting is superb, the story is gripping, and the characters are engaging. Aamir Khan walked away with every possible award for his role as DJ in this film, and rightly so. His performance is outstanding.
A little FF (fun fact): The woman who plays Sue is played by Alice Patten, daughter of the last governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten.