The marking of anniversaries of death, births and theatrical releases used to be the preserve of die-hard fans, professional nostalgists and journalists until not too long ago. These days, the reminder that a movie has achieved landmark status often comes from publicists. They don’t always wait for a film to reach a respectable and conventionally accepted milestone, such as a quarter of a century. Press releases and tweets extolling a film’s actual and absent merits can begin as soon as, say, five years have passed, or 13. Rang De Basanti is only ten years old. But already, it is a media event, an photo opportunity for the cast and crew, a chance to revisit the days when co-producer UTV Movies backed smart mainstream films, and a platform for director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra to subtly promote his new movie, the upcoming period romance Mirziya.
Written by Mehra and Rensil D’Silva and based on a story by Kamlesh Pandey, Rang De Basanti is pop anarchy at its seductive best. The movie delivers a supposedly patriotic message – the system has to be shaken up through violence in order for things to get better – with the bells and whistles that an advertising man is best placed to command. Mehra, after all, used to make commercials before he became a filmmaker with Aks in 2001. Rang De Basanti has an interesting plot, a committed ensemble cast (including Aamir Khan, Siddharth, Atul Kulkarni, Sharman Joshi and Kunaal Kapoor), a fabulous and still popular soundtrack by AR Rahman, youthful energy, superior production values, and a skillful meshing of entertainment and edification.
Rang De Basanti seeks to recreate the spirit of fiery rebellion embodied by Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Ram Prasad Bismil, S Rajguru and Ashfaqullah Khan. A British filmmaker keen on making a film about these colonial-era revolutionaries travels to Delhi and casts her associate’s four hedonistic friends. A fifth man joins the cast – a Hindutva proponent who does not like the others but is inspired by the filmmaker’s efforts. All colours of the ideological spectrum, from soft left to far right, are thus covered.
Matters turn grim when a friend who is an Indian Air Force pilot dies in a MiG crash. The government’s cover-up of the causes behind frequent MiG crashes (dubbed “flying coffins” by the media) erases the line between real and reel. After protests and candle-lit vigils fail, our heroes turn into the revolutionaries they have been imitating. (The movie inter-cuts between the colonial past and the democratic present to ram home its point.) The defence minister is bumped off, a son murders his corrupt father, and the warriors sacrifice themselves after tears have been shed, hugs exchanged, and one last chart-topping song has been played.
The movie skillfully taps into the disgust that most tax-paying Indians feel towards the political class, but apart from picking up guns and wiping out the opposition, Rang De Basanti reveals no path except the one trodden by vigilantes. Can individual acts of violence, rather than sustained protest and organised action, bring about justice? Will assassinating crooked politicians stop corruption and create a better India? The movie’s heroes cannot be mistaken for Naxalites or insurgents fighting for a cause, since they are stirred into action only after one of their own dies. They banter about corruption and the general pathetic state of the nation over parathas, but do nothing until one of their friends loses his life. Unless it is personal, it can never get political. A great price is paid at the end for trying to take on the state, as if to suggest that rebellion is an exercise in futility.
The colour-me-red message with traces of nihilism squarely hit its target in 2006. Rang De Basanti was a bona fide hit, and is counted as a contemporary popular classic. Its easily digestible message is echoed each time a politician gets his face smeared with ink or is hit with a shoe. The system blinks, and then simply carries on.
