Simply Being | Simple Being

The Rising

The Rising is an interesting film. It has a few unnecessary songs and a couple of roles that could have been completely done away with, I agree. Yet the film stands apart from the others in terms of performances, dialogues and characters.

Aamir Khan plays Mangal Pandey, a sepoy with the 34th regiment at Barrackpore under the command of Captain Gordon, a role played ably by Toby Stephens. Remember him as the arrogant cricket captain of the British team in Lagaan? He has put in such a commendable performance as Captain Gordon who finally joins the *rebel forces* that I totally flipped over this guy…:-)

Rani Mukherjee looks gorgeous as Heera, the courtesan who falls in love with Mangal’s dynamism and bravery. Amisha Patel has a utterly expendable role but she makes Toby Stephens look good and that’s reasonable by all standards! The music is really good and some of the songs hum on and on in your mind.

At the end of it, I walked away with a nice feeling of pride about being an Indian. Among all the countries that broke free from colonial rule, how many of them have reached a status as India has? The country with the 4th highest GDP in the world, one of the largest base of knowledge workers, one of the hottest economies today, the growth rate, a democracy – this country is indeed dhanya. From here on, it is only going upward.