Straight from the heart of AG, Swades is another Hindi film with strong NRI references. Thats where the similarities from any Bollywood film end. Swades is very much original and hard hitting film. AG tried to talk about lot of issues that India is facing today and refered to one of the problems and shown some way to solve the problem. This is a film as much for Indian residents as it is for NRI’s. AG poits out a phenomena that we all are very comfortable with today. The phenomena is that if we are not affected by some wrong thing, we dont really bother about that.
Swades, I thought it is romantic in every sense. What is appealing in this film is that Hero does not come to India with overtones of patriotism. Infact, he comes to take back his surrogate mother and falls in love with girl who is a level headed strong woman who wants to some thing to the village she lives in. Sharukh Khan infact does few good things not out of patriotism, but to take his mother to US. What he goes through doing this changes his outlook and his priorities. This is the precise reason, why I liked the film. In our Indian movies with any of these themes, the Hero is a strong patriot and is very ideal. You will notice that Sharukh’s charecter is like any one of us or infact any of our NRI’s. What is also appealing is how the director touches upon lot of issues but zeros in on one particular issue.
There are some intense and strong moments in the film. The scene where the hero and the heroine argue about the issues India is facing and how ideally to solve them is a lesson to all of us. In these situations, it is easy to be stereo type and criticise politics. But, AG took a different path, the heroine actually supports the political set up and the politicians today. The highlight in this particular scene is how Sharukh Khan lets out his anguish and balmes every one and uses the term ’’YOU INDIANS’’, and his mothers strong yet controlled reaction to that phrase.
The scene where the heroine refuses a match because he wouldnt let her work in the school is very strong and drew lot of appreciation in the theater.
Another scene that stands out is when Sharukh goes to far off village to collect some money from the farmer. This scene is a real case and actually spell out the problems rural India is facing today.
There are some lighter moments as well, the post master and his fascination for Internet, the tea shop owner who has big plans to open DHABHA on the highways of US etc...
The only below par stuff in the film is its background score. Some how the background score is not in sync with the situations and the back drop of the story. All in all a strong film which gives message, yet not very obviously.
We might find one day that a Big 5 consulting firm does a lot of study, analysis and comes out with list of problems AG discussed in this film and also ways to solve those problems. Only difference is that we would have paid them part of our GDP to tell us about the problems and solutions we already knew of. Lets each one of us do something and prosper together.