Mangal Pandey, a tale of one disenchanted sepoy serving in Great
Britain’s imperial East India company, becomes India’s voice of freedom
and leads the country into rebellion against their masters, almost
bringing them to their knees, surely would make for an epic and
thunderous film with universal resonance IF supported by a good script
and good direction. However, what does it make, when you have a
scriptwriter and director who want to wrap up the entire pathos of
Victorian India from philosophy, economics, religion, politics,
culture, alongside themes of friendship, love and betrayal with a
sprinkling of song and dance in a single two and a half hour film? You
get a film that is no longer about Mangal Pandey, in fact, really not
about anything at all.
Mangal Pandey suffers a painful death with helmers director
Ketan Mehta and screenwriter Farrukh Dhondy; more so Mr Dhondy
who earlier shared writing credits for another badly written film -
Subhash Ghai’s Kisna - the warrior poet. The script has been so badly
composed that it belies belief that a big production house would spend so
lavishly in getting it shot. Dhondy’s overloads his story with subplots
which cover everything from arguments on capitalism, opium trade,
religion and caste system to love stories between the leads Mangal Pandey(Aamir Khan) and Gordon Cooper(Toby Stephens) and everything is hopelessly underdeveloped and brushed over, and worse, the stories are all disconnected. There is no transition between scenes and if there is - it’s jarring.
But nothing can be anymore JARRING than the songs, composed by
music maestro A.R.Rehman and amongst his worst soundtracks to date.
Bollywood is infamous for forcing songs into a plot and Rising has to be
one of the worst offences I’ve ever seen in a Bollywood production.
This really is the quintessential song in Switzerland routine except with
period clothing.
The songs are placed almost arbitrarily into the story for what seems
like nothing more than novelty value. It’s almost a case of, ’’Hey,
forget the film for a while, watch this song’’ and even the songs end
very abruptly.
It seems as if Mehta has made three movies (all of them underdeveloped)
and intercuts between them: The English movie (Gorden Cooper’s moral
and ethical struggle with the East India company, it’s Opium trade and
tyranny) and Indian movie(Mangal Pandey, the villagers - their gossip
and customs) and finally the Music Video movie(a series of lavishly
mounted music videos) Individually, they are well done, some scenes are
extraordinary and could give you goose bumps, but without there being
any transition and continuity between them and the glue to marry the
scenes together, you are never quite immersed in the film or the
characters; you are always kept at a distance.
Technically the pic is good, with just a few technical hangups. The
cinematography is good, but there is nothing visually spectacular about
the film despite it’s epic canvas. The film has largely been composed
in static sweeping wide-screen shots that reminisce the tradition of
Hollywood classics like Lawrence of Arabia, but they fail to impress
and few of the shots are poorly focused. The film also suffers from a
few dropped frames on rare occasions that register as flashes on the
screen, which is a minor issue, but undermines it’s professionalism.
There are also a few scenes with special effects which are at best
satisfactory as they are too blurry. The pic scores however on the
bombastic sound effects and background score. It is more of a sound
feast than a visual feast.
The battle scenes are extraordinary and very well done.
Aamir Khan’s performance is as his usual brilliant, but Ketan Mehta
does not give him ample screen time to truly make an impression like he
did in Lagaan. That is a gross waste of his talent. Toby Stephen, the
Die Another Day villain as Gordon Copper provides good support to
Aamir. Rani Mukherjee(Heera) and Amisha Patel(Jwala) as the love
interests have nothing much to do.
There are some scenes that are brilliantly done (mild spoiler) such as
a scene where the villagers surround the British holding onto their
flaming torches and the rousing climax. Unfortunately, that cannot save
this film from the mediocrity it is as a whole. It’s a colossal
disappointment, but it is by no means unwatchable and in parts good.