Swades
Ever since I arrived in Bombay a week ago I've been feeling great about being home. Swades was definitely the right movie to watch. My Chitra Pachi (aunt) was invited by Ashutosh Gowariker for a preview of Swades today. They go back a long way from the time he acted in her TV series Kacchi Dhoop in 1985-86. Chitra Pachi ofcourse asked him if she could bring her family along and we all (my parents, Ritwik and I) tagged along. Ashutosh remembered Ritwik and me as kids hanging around the set during shooting. (Incidentally, we also had some small forgettable roles in the serial). He was quite amazed at how big we had grown :)
The film was awesome. The cast performed really well. Shah Rukh Khan was surprisingly good- I walked into the theater expecting nothing from him , especially after seeing Veer Zaara recently, but he gave a powerful performance. He didn't ham as usual - and emoted effectively using his facial expressions and eyes in a subtle manner. The lead actress is a new comer and was pretty good too.
Ashtosh deserves full credit for the concept and the script. He has managed to make a regular hindi commercial film , omitting cliches in the storyline like villians and tragedy and breaking the stereotypes in the depiction of certain characters like villagers, lower caste people and even foreigners (in this case Americans- who speak in English instead of Hindi with silly accents !). The concept is quite different from the run of the mill stories, the script is crisply written and is witty . The songs blend into the storyline and there are no "item numbers".
The cinematography and locations selected were beautiful.
There are some shots taken from SRK's apartment which show the memorials in Washington DC. Looking at those shots I knew they could be taken only from Rosslyn (where I live- the fact that some shots were taken literally from my backyard did make me happy). The big glass windows made me suspect that the building was Beldevere which is very close to my building and Ashutosh verified this.
I could go on and on - but since the movie hasn't been released yet , I won't ruin it (more!) for everyone else.
Let me just say - its the best Hindi film I have seen in ages .. considering the BS thats churned out these days - so go watch it.
posted by mightypen @ 3:35 PM
2 Comments:
Yes, nice shots of D.C., but I thought NASA operations were in Houston???
What! No items numbers !? :D
Well I enjoyed the movie as well. For once the music didn't get in the way, although I still think they couldave done without a few songs..
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