The Rising - Sunset of Period Movies?

Why on earth did Deepa Sahi have to do the editing (I did remember her name in the credits! Or maybe I am hallucinating!)? Why is there a Holi song right after there is a buildup to rebellion? Was this the surprise packet that Amisha was supposed to be in? If ever you had any misgiving about her, her characterization is your vengeance! But then I am getting ahead of myself.

Mangal Pandey (MP) was my most eagerly awaited movie of 2005. No, let me correct that, 2003, 2004 and 2005. And boy, what a damp squib it is. God bless AR Rehman-poor guy, atleast he delivers. A few days ago, ARR publicly announced that he will not do any more period movies in the future, since he had put in a lot of effort into MP and Bose (Bose was produced by Sahara) and Sahara had not promoted the film’s music like they had said they would. Also he said that he had picked up MP because it had Aamir Khan (AK) in it. Bloody hell, I went to see MP since it had AK in it. Atleast I am in good company. Now that’s two paragraphs of rage without saying what’s wrong with it.

Ok, MP has an excellent sound track backed by the hard work of ARR who’s strived to recreate the music of the era and the region. In fact, I have been humming, “Mangala, Mangala…” for the last month during my runs as it is an awesome track full of life. And Javed Akhtar’s lyrics are as good as ever, like we would expect it to be. Aamir’s costumes look slick and are well done. Kailash Kher and Sukhwinder Singh deserve special mention for their rendering of their respective tracks Almaddath Maula (& Mangala Mangala) – and Takey, Takey (reminiscent of his track in 1947). Om Puri is the narrator and we all know he has been blessed with just the voice, That’s about all I can say in its favour.

The movie kicks off with a painting transforming into a real scene – Excellent cinematography. And it is knit by the traveling band of musicians, astride an elephant – nice concept. But then you wait all thru the movie for the bloody script to kick in and suddenly there’s the interval and 100 mins of your time has gone by. You assure yourself that the movie will pick up post interval and wait till the credits roll over! And to add to the outrage, the national anthem is played at the beginning. The saving grace was that everyone did standup. So people in my country are still proud of being here. I was whistling when Aamir emerges from the river and ascends the steps in that memorable scene. But at the end, I left the theatre feeling like I had been abandoned on the highway – you know a long way down and only yourself to blame for the distance not covered.

Too much is made of the relationship between MP and his officer Gordon (played well by Toby Stephens) and too little of the scale of the revolt of 1857, the latter being made to seem like some local riot. Rani Mukherjee essays a brief role as a nautch girl. There seems to have been a conflict of priorities in the 2nd half of the movie as to whether to give prominence to the revolt or to the character and the result seems to have been like Deve Gowda’s coalition government - tacky and superficial.

Maybe I should go and watch James – atleast I have a very low expectation from it, since it seems to be a signal of the Gultisation/Rajnisation of Bollywood, what with guys flying 20 ft in the air after being hit by James!