Mangal Pandey, a tale of one disenchanted sepoy serving in Great Britain's imperial East India company, becomes India's voice of freedom and leads the country into rebellion against their masters, almost bringing them to their knees, surely would make for an epic and thunderous film with universal resonance IF supported by a good script and good direction. However, what does it make, when you have a scriptwriter and director who want to wrap up the entire pathos of Victorian India from philosophy, economics, religion, politics, culture, alongside themes of friendship, love and betrayal with a sprinkling of song and dance in a single two and a half hour film? You get a film that is no longer about Mangal Pandey, in fact, really not about anything at all.
Mangal Pandey suffers a painful death with helmers director Ketan Mehta and screenwriter Farrukh Dhondy; more so Mr Dhondy, who earlier shared writing credits for the also badly written Subhash Ghai's "Kisna the warrior poet" The script has been so badly composed that it belies belief that a big production house would spend so lavishly in getting it shot. Dhondy overloads his story with subplots which cover everything from arguments on capitalism, opium trade, religion and caste system to love stories between the leads Mangal Pandey(Aamir Khan) and Gordon Cooper(Toby Stephens) and everything is hopelessly underdeveloped and brushed over, and worse, the stories are all disconnected and incongruous. There is no transition between scenes and if there is - it's jarring. But nothing can be anymore JARRING than the songs, composed by music maestro A.R.Rehman and amongst his worst soundtracks to date. Bollywood is infamous for forcing songs into a plot and Rising has to be one of the worst offences I've ever seen in a Bollywood production. This really is the quintessential song in Switzerland routine except with period clothing. The songs are placed almost arbitrarily into the story for what seems like nothing more than novelty value. It's almost a case of, "Hey, forget the film for a while, watch this song" and even the songs end very abruptly.
It seems as if Mehta has made three movies (all of them underdeveloped) and intercuts between them: The English movie (Gorden Cooper's moral and ethical struggle with the East India company, it's Opium trade and tyranny) and Indian movie(Mangal Pandey, the villagers - their gossip and customs and struggle for freedom) and finally the Music Video movie(a series of lavishly mounted music videos) Individually, they are well done, some scenes are extraordinary and could give you goose bumps, but without there being any transition and story continuity between them and the glue to marry the scenes together, you are never quite immersed in the film or the characters; you are always kept at a distance.
Technically the pic is good, with just a few technical hangups. The cinematography is good, but there is nothing visually spectacular about the film despite it's epic canvas. The film has largely been composed in static sweeping wide-screen shots that reminisce the tradition of Hollywood classics like Lawrence of Arabia, but they fail to impress and few of the shots are poorly focused. The film also suffers from a few dropped frames on rare occasions that register as flashes on the screen, which is a minor issue, but undermines it's professionalism. There are also a few scenes with special effects which are at best satisfactory as they are too blurry. The film does score on the bombastic sound effects and background scores. It was more of sound feast than a visual feast for myself.
There are a few extraordinary battle scenes that have been very well-done.
Aamir Khan's performance is as his usual brilliant, but Ketan Mehta does not give him ample screen time to truly make an impression like he did in Lagaan. The picture only turns it's focus on Mangal Pandey in the second act. However, the character of Mangal Pandey itself is very sketchy and lacks heoric dimension. Even the actual revolt that closes this film is organizied andlead by another character called Bhakt Khan and Mangal Pandey just plays second fiddle. Toby Stephen, the Die Another Day villain as Gordon Copper provides good support to Aamir. Rani Mukherjee(Heera) and Amisha Patel(Jwala) as the love interests have nothing much to do.
There are some scenes that are brilliantly done, especially the rousing climax. Unfortunately, that cannot save this film from the mediocrity it falls into as a whole due to poor writing and uninspiring direction. It was a colossal disappointment for myself, but it is by no means unwatchable and in parts good. I do recommend watching it, but don't expect a classic, it's anything but.
Mangal Pandey suffers a painful death with helmers director Ketan Mehta and screenwriter Farrukh Dhondy; more so Mr Dhondy, who earlier shared writing credits for the also badly written Subhash Ghai's "Kisna the warrior poet" The script has been so badly composed that it belies belief that a big production house would spend so lavishly in getting it shot. Dhondy overloads his story with subplots which cover everything from arguments on capitalism, opium trade, religion and caste system to love stories between the leads Mangal Pandey(Aamir Khan) and Gordon Cooper(Toby Stephens) and everything is hopelessly underdeveloped and brushed over, and worse, the stories are all disconnected and incongruous. There is no transition between scenes and if there is - it's jarring. But nothing can be anymore JARRING than the songs, composed by music maestro A.R.Rehman and amongst his worst soundtracks to date. Bollywood is infamous for forcing songs into a plot and Rising has to be one of the worst offences I've ever seen in a Bollywood production. This really is the quintessential song in Switzerland routine except with period clothing. The songs are placed almost arbitrarily into the story for what seems like nothing more than novelty value. It's almost a case of, "Hey, forget the film for a while, watch this song" and even the songs end very abruptly.
It seems as if Mehta has made three movies (all of them underdeveloped) and intercuts between them: The English movie (Gorden Cooper's moral and ethical struggle with the East India company, it's Opium trade and tyranny) and Indian movie(Mangal Pandey, the villagers - their gossip and customs and struggle for freedom) and finally the Music Video movie(a series of lavishly mounted music videos) Individually, they are well done, some scenes are extraordinary and could give you goose bumps, but without there being any transition and story continuity between them and the glue to marry the scenes together, you are never quite immersed in the film or the characters; you are always kept at a distance.
Technically the pic is good, with just a few technical hangups. The cinematography is good, but there is nothing visually spectacular about the film despite it's epic canvas. The film has largely been composed in static sweeping wide-screen shots that reminisce the tradition of Hollywood classics like Lawrence of Arabia, but they fail to impress and few of the shots are poorly focused. The film also suffers from a few dropped frames on rare occasions that register as flashes on the screen, which is a minor issue, but undermines it's professionalism. There are also a few scenes with special effects which are at best satisfactory as they are too blurry. The film does score on the bombastic sound effects and background scores. It was more of sound feast than a visual feast for myself.
There are a few extraordinary battle scenes that have been very well-done.
Aamir Khan's performance is as his usual brilliant, but Ketan Mehta does not give him ample screen time to truly make an impression like he did in Lagaan. The picture only turns it's focus on Mangal Pandey in the second act. However, the character of Mangal Pandey itself is very sketchy and lacks heoric dimension. Even the actual revolt that closes this film is organizied andlead by another character called Bhakt Khan and Mangal Pandey just plays second fiddle. Toby Stephen, the Die Another Day villain as Gordon Copper provides good support to Aamir. Rani Mukherjee(Heera) and Amisha Patel(Jwala) as the love interests have nothing much to do.
There are some scenes that are brilliantly done, especially the rousing climax. Unfortunately, that cannot save this film from the mediocrity it falls into as a whole due to poor writing and uninspiring direction. It was a colossal disappointment for myself, but it is by no means unwatchable and in parts good. I do recommend watching it, but don't expect a classic, it's anything but.