Swades

Swades -- Motherland

MAIN CAST:
Shahrukh Khan -- Mohan
Gayatri Joshi -- Gita
Kishori Balal -- Kaveri

BRIEF PLOT OVERVIEW:
Mohan is a wealthy NRI who works for NASA in the United States. When memories of his beloved nanny and "second mother," Kaveri, begin to tug at his heart strings, he returns to India in hopes of bringing her back to America with him. Then he becomes engrossed in the lives of the other villagers and their struggles, and slowly but surely, he finds himself torn between his life in America and his roots in India.

FILM -- 4.5/5
I originally watched Swades with a wealthy NRI I was dating, and both of us went in to the film with low expectations: me because SRK, for all that I love him, tends to ruin dramatic films when he is their emotional apex, him because he was so used to movies about rural India painting his homeland as a dirty, backwards nation with nothing good going for it. We were pleasantly surprised when Swades turned out to be well-written, well-filmed, and--best of all--very honest, with as many good things represented as there were bad. Swades is very, very, very slow and occassionally a bit choppy, however, so it's not the sort of movie you'd watch for kicks and giggles with a bunch of your friends (or your boyfriend--boo on me!). I was also a little disgruntled with the costuming; maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but how would someone with Gita's economic conditions be able to afford so many different outfits? Other than that, Swades is beautifully crafted, and many of the slice-of-life scenes made my ex-boyfriend misty-eyed with memories. The scene where the village crowds around a makeshift movie screen to watch a Bollywood film, for example, reminded him of Wednesday nights in his village, when people would crowd in to an old tent to watch what few Bollywood films their town council could afford.

CHARACTERS -- 5/5
Swades presents one of Shahrukh Khan's most believable performances. His character is a well-crafted one, a wealthy NRI Brahmin who is almost embarassed of his culture at first, then learns to love it, for all of its faults. SRK could've overracted and let his charisma carry the character, as he is wont to do, but he didn't; he really tried with this performance, and it shows. Gayatri Joshi isn't the absolute best actress, but I did like her, and she's very pretty. I adored Kishori Balal and her character, Kaveri. The supporting cast was generally great, with the exception of the Caucasian actors, whose stilted dialogue delivery REALLY annoyed me.

SOUNDTRACK -- 4.5/5
To be quite honest, I am not huge on Swades' soundtrack as a whole. I don't listen to most of the songs outside of the film, and I found some of them rather boring. Regardless, I have to rate it high for three reasons: it's unique and fresh among Bollywood soundtracks, it features a nice variety of songs, and the title song is absolutely GORGEOUS. With its poignant sense of longing for one's homeland, "Swades" (also called "Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera") is one of the loveliest songs I've ever heard; it brought me and my ex-boyfriend to tears. The soundtrack as a whole is good, though, and if I had to choose a second favorite, it would probably be "Yun Hi Chalal Chal," an upbeat song that continues the motif of the "wanderer" returning to his homeland. "Yeh Tara Woh Tara" is cute, and there's a deep message woven through it without making the song too heavy-handed, but I felt like it should've been a bit shorter. "Saanwariya" is pretty and sounds a lot like a pop song you'd hear on the radio. "Pal Pal Hai Bhaari" is a catchy, classically-styled tune that tells the tale of Ram and Sita. I didn't notice "Dekho Na," but I'm picky about love ballads, so my opinions are a bit biased. The background music is usually very fitting, although there are a few cheesey pieces played by a saxaphone that rubbed me the wrong way. In the end, this soundtrack--composed entirely by A.R. Rahman--is true to Rahman's form: it doesn't suck. Seriously, if A.R Rahman ever writes a soundtrack that is completely sucky, I will die from shock.

OVERALL -- 4/5
During my second viewing of Swades, I walked out of my dorm room and down the hall to the water fountain to fill up a plastic bottle with fresh, cold water. I'd left a little water in the bottle the night before, and I dumped it down the fountain's drain, deeming this water too warm and "plasticy" for drinking. In that moment, I realized I was ashamed of myself, but also proud: I was ashamed of myself for tossing out perfectly good water when so many other countries struggle for natural resources, but I was proud that my country's great wealth permitted me to be so flighty on occassion. This, I feel, is the true message of Swades: we must not blindly laud our heritage for its long-lived customs, nor should we condemn it for its faults, but rather, we should be constantly aware of our culture. As long as we are willing to keep our ancestry in our hearts, we can change with the times and accept new ways of living, not necessarily changing our culture to mimic another's, but rather, letting our culture adapt to the times. Swades' slow pace and generally serious subject manner ruin its replay value, but it is still a great film, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

TOTAL SCORE -- 18/20 (almost perfect)




A COUPLE OF SIDENOTES:
I mentioned the opinions of my Indian ex-boyfriend several times throughout this review because I found these opinons relevant. After all, isn't the hero of this story an NRI from a small town who found success in another country, just like my ex-boyfriend?

But he expressed a rather strong opinion when we finished watching this movie that I feel I should mention, just to be fair: "NRIs and non-Indians will probably love this movie, but I doubt people who actually live in rural India are going to care. Nobody wants to see a bunch of people in similarly poor conditions having their problems solved by an NRI, a figure most villagers will probably never see in their lives. It'd be annoying to watch this if I'd never left my village and still lived in poverty, because it almost seems like none of these marvelous things would've been possible without Mohan's intervention, and real-life villagers aren't going to get a Mohan."

I don't know if I necessarily agree or disagree with that opinion, but it is certainly something that made me think, and I felt it would only be proper to repost that opinion here. Swades certainly touched my heart and brought back fond memories for him, but I'm not sure how resident Indians would feel about this film.