Here comes Bhudha bhargav. Review on Swades

Caveat:

I did not like this movie. And if you want the more regular Swades review.. read the ohter one I wrote on Desam. That is more tongue sweetening, eye pleasing and in general as far from teh truth as possible. This review was removed once because some comments were unpallatable.

Personal experience

T'was the saturday night after a really grueling gaming session. Being software engineers, anything that involves the spending of more than 25 calories like moving the mouse and continuously tapping on the left click button tired all of us out. So we needed some fresh air and opted for the Sathyam theatre for our 'outing'. Wonder of wonders there were tickets available for a 10 o clock show at 9 p.m (Madras guys have bad taste... they usually think it is very appropriate to take their gfs out on a saturday night to a Hindi picture). So much so that even movies like MEA which outlived its watchability some 35 years back run for packed houses here.

Honest Opinion... the cons basically.

Movie length - Basically you could write or read through the entire Suitable boy during the course of the movie. The story did not warrant that length and to think all that hapenned was only during 5 weeks is terrible. Movies that usually span 3 or 4 hours have enough material to cover a few generations of protagonists... probably I might have killed 3 generations of flies during the course of the movie... coming to think of it.. that is more intersting. Should add that as my new passion... tracing the family tree of the flies I kill.

Mohan Bhuddha -

His eyes swell with tears when he sees a kid selling water. His eyes swell with tears when a poor guy laments about how poor he is. His eyes swell with tears when another guy is not able to send his kids to school because of caste problems. Could he have torn the train down or bored us more with his one man histrionics like in Ashoka? Why do people praise his underplayed role? Why should he even bother to overact when AG is already trying his best to repeat our 3rd standard moral science lesson? Thank you Mrs Nithyashree... you made moral science 2.5 hours shorter and much much more fun. Atleast the characters were animals... like the crow and the jackal... it appealed to us children.

The 'message'

Was there a message in the movie ? My left fingernail can give you a better message ('Scratch Ouch Scratch... yes the itch is now gone'). What is a message? A message is delivered when you highlight a social problem and provide a plausible solution to it. The problem is not highlighted properly. It is presented only through the eyes of the Bhuddha... does he even try to understand why people have been doing it for those many years? No... He just asserts his fat american posterior on the village and says this is wrong... this is right.. oh dude !!! why are you so backward.. study... learn some mathematics.. you can sell this pot for 100 Rs in the market. Uh hullo !!! would he drive his caravan over to the city everyday to sell those pots? A PM from NASA.. doesnt he understand the wholeseller-retailer concept? gentlemen.. please tell me.. what is more expensive... mud and a wheel or a broken down tempo and diesel? Thank you.

The other cast

They are not funny. They are not too boring. They are ok. I wish ourman had paid a little more attention to the make-up of the characters. I wonder if people really starch their sarees in a village and wear 3.5 layers of make-up to hide skin blemishes. Even we dont do that in the city. Anyway not in me to comment about all that... All I want to say is that a few brillaint scenes by the sidekicks could not really lift the movie. This is not about expectations and dissapointment. Hindi movies are only so much. no1 can really raise this genre to a level of respectability... be it AG, Mani Ratnam or I dont know who else is even trying.

Final Thoughts

I wish someone from America comes here watches the Hindi movies and decides to do something about it like Bhuddha Bhargav does. Will that happen ? ;). Lol. fat chance... or so the bhuddha would say.