Could have been better... Review on Swades

Running in the theatres near you is another film from the Ashutosh Gowarikar stable - Swades - the story of a NASA engineer coming back to India is search of his nanny, and then being trasformed by his experiences in a small village - Charanpur - and deciding to stay back in India and change the way things are here.

If you want to know whether or not you must watch this movie - the verdict is - go see it. But not entirely for the same reasons why you go to watch any other movie.

For one, Swades can do with tons of editing - it is too long, a little flat at times, and when songs break out in the second half, you can hear people in the hall yawn and hoot.

At some level, probably Ashutosh Gowarikar believes in the message of the movie - that we, the Indians, have to do something about our country to make things happen. Yet, and a lot of people may disagree on this, the movie glosses over many real issues really. It talks about caste system and power shortage and corruption, but the real elements of politics in play are missing. Charanpur doesn't look like a typical Indian village I see in the NDTV stories everyday. I feel some more depth could have been brought in handling the theme.

Still, the effort is commendable. It is one movie, in a long long time, that I can go and see with my mother without feeling embarassed. The dilemma of Mohan Bhargava (Shahrukh Khan) is something I can relate to very well. The building of the relationship between Mohan and Geeta (Gayatri Joshi) has been handled very well. There is a subtelty about the entire story that is very refreshing.

Shahrukh Khan has acted extremely well - no hamming, no over acting, just the regular intelligent thoughtful educated Indian guy - the idealism of Mohan Bhargav shows through. Gayatri Joshi is brilliant in her debut too. She looks very much the part she is playing. Actually, all characters have acted extremely well. In that sense it feels very real.

Music is average. I liked ''Chala Chal Rahi'' and ''Yeah tara, woh tara...'', but with A. R. Rehman and Javed Akhtar together the songs could have been better too. Cinematography is good; it is a good looking movie where you don't feel that too much of an effort have been made in making it look good.

On the whole, Swades could have been a lot better. That was my first reaction when I left the hall. And yet, even three days later, I can't stop thinking about it. It stirs the Mohan Bhargav inside me.

I hope Swades does well on the box office so that it encourages Ashutosh Gowarikar and others to make more such sensible movies.

https://rantsandraves2004.blogspot.com/2004/12/swades-review.html