You are too kind to Ketan Mehta. Unlike me

btw quizman you forgot to mention clevage…

bhang is NOT the same as opium
bhang is cannabis. opium is not!
they have very different properties!!!!

i shall have more to say about the rising, shortly!

mangal never did opium..right?

As for historical license, all movies have to do that in order to make a compelling plot. This requires fusing some characters together, while losing whole side stories, and weaving some important events into the narrative.

Mehta did a fine job clarifying that the “record” so to speak was at the very least influenced by the authorities to isolate and slander Pandey’s rebellion as merely a Bhang-induced frenzy. I’ve seen this with other historians who have taken British records at face value, without even questioning whether incidents were framed in a way that deflected blame from them and onto their subjects.

The opium backstory was very useful for illustrating the company’s policies. The firing on the villagers was reminiscent of infamous massacres like Bloody Sunday in Ireland, or the shootings in Fallujah, or even Sharpeville in South Africa that touched a wave of rebellion.

The nautch girl Heera was useful in illustrating the prostitution of the body as well as the soul (great scene where she reproaches Mangal for thinking ill of her trade, while his slavery was a lot worse).

I think the film needs a director’s cut though. It would be a fantastic film if some cuts were made, and the voice over was removed for the international audience who have no need to translate English dialogue.

I fear there will be an attempt to minimize the allegorical impact of this film, where it is strongest. Subhash K Jha’s scathing critique which has been widely replicated seems also to have a hidden purpose, as I feel that he must have seen some other film, are at least watched it with a certain mission in mind.

This review is more refreshing (despite some factual errors.)

http://chud.com/reviews/3979

I’m sorry. I think your statements represent exactly what you accuse me of – ideological motivation. Read your comments on Iraq, Ireland, the PM’s Oxford speech. What has that got to do with the film? [I'm not talking about Mehta's subsequent comments to the press.] YOu indulge in cheap ad hominems. X did not like the film. Ergo, X is a rabid right-wing looney.

My critique was on the film’s lack of cinematic merits. The EIC was anything but an organization that believed in *the free market*. My criticism of the Rising’s diatribe was not about the director’s views on whatever his feelings on the free market economy is, however simiplistic and misinformed he may be – I was irked that it distracted from the main crimes of the East India Company, which was to make a parallel system of government in cahoots with Indians and then
undermining existing free market structures. If anything, the East India Company was a terrible monopoly, akin to Stalinism – they controlled the means of production, drove independent businessmen out of work and transferred money from one region to another (in this case a diff country) and so on.

You seem to miss that point as well. Maybe, an Economics 101 course would help. :-)

Even elementary readings about the “mutiny” and the East India Company tell this tale — Ireland and India are connected in this way, as possibly are the uprisings of 1857 and 1916.

On cinematic grounds, the movie was very good — a few edits could help, but otherwise a worthy endeavour, and definitely one of th best of the last few years. I usually can’t stand most Bollywood films and even the crossover ones like Hollywood Bollywood, or Bride and Prejudice. Ugh.

As for ideology, well, what do you get when you publish your views on the blog and they colour your view of a film? I am just afraid this ideological impetus is happening across the board, and detracting from the film which is not bad at all.

As I said, the EIC wasn’t about the free market at all. India was a free market economy before the British came. After they had monopolised production, our share of the world GDP dropped from 22% to roughly 4%. A fellow blogger, Ravikiran had raised this topic before and many folks had intelligent viewpoints on it. It may be worthwhile reading the posts and the subsequent comments.

I have seen many good Hindi films to like ‘The Rising’ on its cinematic merit (or lack of it). Let us just agree to disagree.

Doesn’t the co-incidence of all three of these in a week jangle other people’s nerves?

Now you are right that MP may not be history but it is a particular remembering of a particular historical episode. But the semblance of connectivity is just as imagined as these latterday rememberings. As Shahid Amin’s review of Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s book on MP in Outlook India points out “. It was 1857 that made Mangal Pandey, and not the other way round.”

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THANKS