Sunday, August 26, 2007

Chaak De India!!!!

I think this is the 3rd movie of Sharukh other than DDLJ and Swades that I liked. Nothing personal but I hate his emotional over reaction. Though he managed to do it again in Chaak de, in the last scene after winning the match, the overall movie was cute with the new actors coming up well. I watched it in Canada and the people were quite excited about Mr Khan, and I am sure there must have been girls falling and screaming when he enters the scene in the movie theatre back in India, though all those and many more makes no sense. Well, the main point, off late we have seen quite a number of Bollywood movies sans the emotional tear-shake but nationalism sans the hatred and blame game for other members. We have moved out of the community feelings and local feelings of the erstwhile Bollywood movies. Rang De Basanti,Chaak De,Nayak,Khakee,Gangajal are best fits of this genre.
If we watch these movies very carefully, we will notice that the theme is not about problems with a community,religion,country or region. It is a problem with the system and we represent that system. The system that rules us, that we blame, has been made by us and we are responsible to maintain it.We are responsible to change it. We cannot call it gutter and take refuge in just blaming the system. We cannot be a Babu and yet criticize the system. We must practice what we preach and atleast make some effort to solve that problem. I think these movies should leave the viewers with the thought as to what we are, where we stand and what is our contribution to the system be it at whatever micro level possible.
The feeling should be pan India, pan Asia and more.......the world wants the 3 Ps- Peace, Progress and Prosperity then why limit it with our trivial feelings; however it has to start somewhere at the grass root level- a top down approach will not work. So what do we call it -Do we call it Global Nationalism?