Aarakshan - A Review

This is a post by the guest blogger Hardik Mootneja

A personal indignant casual review from an audience member.

I liked the movie. It certainly is a bad movie. But its a good bad movie.

Why bad movie? By standards of movie making, of which I understand very little, it clearly seemed to be poorly made. But since I do not understand anything about film making and I comment purely on the basis of other films that I have seen and have been astounded by, I am not the best judge of that. Quite frankly I can let that go and forgive a movie because I am lay viewer who does not understand or care much about film art or technique.

Why a good bad movie? This is because I agreed with, what I found to be, one of the central messages of the movie. It was a propaganda movie and part of the message was to my liking. This is because it was pro-reservation/pro-

affirmative action, as I am. So it was a propaganda movie that agreed with my socio-political view point. I also thought it made very few apologies for it. At least I did not see them if they were.

They made some (and only some) cogent arguments for reservations and against the typical anti-reservation rhetoric. I liked them, because they coincided with arguments made by few of the most articulate and bright dalit writers and intellectuals (eg. Anoop Kumar)

I did not see why dalit activists were offended by it. But honestly, I don't think I have any right or moral standing to wonder, ask or question dalit activists why and when to be offended. They surely have a good reason that I can't see. I would however like to know why the NCSC thought it was Anti-Dalit.

But all that of course is the first half. As with most Bollywood movies the two halves of the movies were, perhaps deliberately, disjoint (w.r.t central theme).

The next half - post intermission - is mostly laughable nonsense with a silly condescending theme revolving around the cult of Amitabh Bachhan (or his character, you can never tell the difference) - who Elizabeth thinks is "the only person who can act", to which I added, "if he chooses to"

Come to think of it - What you see in the trailer is mostly the good part of the movie. If you agree with what they show in the trailer, you need not watch the movie. If you do not agree with it, you should not watch the movie.

There is much more to say about it - like how almost the entire cast is full of brilliant actors severely under-utilized, as is always the case in our movies (and in Hollywood).

There are some naked product placements - for ex. "The wood for your Tabela School was donated entirely by Century Plywood" Amitabh bachhan thanks the (probably real owners) Century Ply guys who say "Yeh toh humara farz tha". Apropos out of nothing. This was hilarious. There is a lot of such stuff.

Seems like someone from the UPA government got Jha to make a movie for them. Much like Swades and Akbar seemed to be. That explains why BSP banned it, besides the part where they showed how electoral representatives of Dalits are corrupt and untrustworthy - which is Standard Operating Principle in Indian media/films.

Hema Malini's character is also unjustifiably and hilariously apropos of nothing. She just turns up in the last scene.

There is this one character called Pandit, predictably Brahmin, who speaks in ludicrously chaste Hindi - 'like all Brahmins do'. Something that would get you beaten up in school and teach you a good enough reason never to speak in. No one, irrespective of caste, creed, race, gender or history of mental disability in family, speaks like that. No body. Of course - Pandit is a truly talented boy who misses out because of reservations 'like all Brahmins do'. The Yadav character is a cowherd 'like all Yadavs are' and speaks in Bhojpuri 'like all Yadavs do'. Amitabh Bachhan's character ....ah forget it....

All in all, no need to watch the movie.

This is a post by the guest blogger Hardik Mootneja. Thank you for your contribution