Donate
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero
Directed by: Shyam Benegal
Actors: Sachin Khedekar, Rajpal Yadav
Year: 2005
Running Time: 222 minutes
Apun Indian hain magar apne ko apni hee ithiaas ke baare mein kuch nahi maloom. So I was a bit skeptical about watching ‘Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero’, as I would not know what part is the fact and what part is fictitious. And I think, I should not be writing a review on this movie since I have not got a clue about Subhas Chandra Bose and Indian history, so I will just give my opinion on Shyam’s direction and the performance given by the actors.
Shyam Benegal started the movie with stating that movie is based on fictitious events and historical data. I cannot remember the exact phrase as I saw the movie a few days ago. Anyway, the point is that it was good of him to state that, so people exactly know what they will be watching. This is what all the directors should do when they are either making a period movie(biographical epic) or even re-making a regional/foreign movie. The movie is split into three parts: Itmad, Ittefaq and Qurbani, hence it has three different kind of pace and in result there is not any flow in the movie. Shyam starts off well with Itmad part, but the pace of movie drops after Bose has left Afghanistan and after that it just feels drag. I was itching to forward the movie, but I could not as it was on one of the desi channel. The Ittefaq part was just completely boring and slow. There was not anything in the movie to keep me attached. Also the affair thrown into middle just made it a lot worse. After Ittefaq the pace picked up gradually, but the direction was a bit scrambled - trying to get too many events in space of a few minutes. It was neither a picture or a documentary-film, i think, he got a bit confused between those two styles and ended up making half picture and half documentary-film. I would have preferred if this was made like a documentary-film and just showing last two years of his life in depth. Nevertheless, I appreciate the trouble Shyam went through researching and making this epic movie. By the way, the cinematography was absolutely stunning.
I thought, Subash Chandra’s character would be a bit powerful and shrewd, but I never saw that in Sachin Khedekar’s acting. He only looked like him. This role was made for him, i think, he could have done much better. Somehow he just felt uncomfortable playing Bose. It was not convincing enough, for me. He was let down by the script as well. He did not have that hard-hitting lines - which would have shown him being a powerful man and shrewd. The writers did not sketch Bose characters properly. When you make a biographical movie, you gotta have the character sketched properly - that’s the main ingredient! Then there is that little fellow - Raj Pal Yadav, playing a Pathan and speaking Pashto and boy, he can act! I think, this role would have been the hardest role he has done so far. The rest of actors aptly play their parts in the movie.
Now let’s talk about the music - my favorite bit. The music is composed by A R Rahman and written by Javed Akhtar. OST of Bose consists of seven lyrical songs and rest instrumental tracks(background score). So I was hoping that Shyam uses those songs as background score rather than…. and he did - which was a good thing, otherwise it would have made the movie much slower. A R Rahman does not sing that much but whenever he sings it’s a bonus! He has sung two, yes, two tracks for this soundtrack. And they are, ‘Jai Hindi’ is a patriotic song and ‘Zikr’ is a sufi song; both songs are just amazingly sung by A R Rahman! In my opinion, Sonu Nigam has given his best in ‘Desh Ki Mitti’ and it has to be his best piece of work, so far. The rest of tracks do live up to the A R Rahman standard, but it’s not kind of tracks that you would have in your iPod. The album is worth a buy, though.
8 Responses to “Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero”
Leave a Reply
Our Comments Policy : The following kinds of comments are troll capped, blocked and/or commenter's identity reported publicly: Verbal abuse, personal attacks, hate statements, spam, trolls, advertising. Please assist us in keeping the comments clean. Use the contact form to let us know if you find unwarranted comments on PFC. Thank you.
- Rob Long’s MARTINI SHOT at KCRW
- I Wanted Jim Carrey as the Joker, But Heath Ledger is…God!
- GoMiCh, the Trinity
- Heath Nolan and Christopher Eckhart are anarchists!
- Contract – RGV RIP!!!!
- I Wanted Jim Carrey as the Joker, But Heath Ledger is…
- Contract – RGV RI
- Heath Nolan and Christopher Eckhart are anarch
- GoMiCh, the Tr
- Chandni Chowk to
Recent Posts:
Hottest Today:
HG, finally! I saw the film some 2 years ago in the theatre and thought it was pretty ‘different’(!). the film had a marked ‘honesty’ to it, and i thought the trisected narrative gave it a fresh feel. i agree that it was heavily flawed but would still like to give it another viewing before saying anything now. i have been waiting for the DVD release of the film ever since i first saw it. but i guess that might be attributed to the rift between the producers and benegal, who blamed them for not ‘pushing’ the film properly, considering it was his most ambitious project till date.
Rahman rocked, as usual, with his score. I love Desh ki mitti, ekla chalo(amazing video), zikr(wasted in the film) n the title track, azaadi.
i still remember there were very few people left in the theatre when the titles rolled, but everyone stood awe struck when the AZAADI song came with the real images from that time period.that was when the otherwise lengthy n tiring film fell in place(which i guess happens with lots of films, they fall together in the titles follwoing the zoom out with the theme song playing…aaah so filmy!)
thanks for digging the film out.
:)
I saw this when it aired on tv here months ago, and it wasn’t something that could catch my attention, I’ll be honest i found it slightly boring but not a movie to be dismissed either.
Worth a watch at least once I say.
tushar,
yup, totally agree with you on song Zikr and Azadi being wasted in the movie, but i did not mind that as much as how badly they sketched the main character!
i read an interview of shyam on bose. and it was a momentous task to make this film. they had to start from scratch even though there is a lot of historical data on this man. shooting in so many different countries must have been painful as well. so i applaud him for that.
Like you, Desh Ki Mitti, Zikr and Azadi are my favorite tracks.
Sangeeta,
yup, it’s worth a dekho..
Well we are not very good at making historical stuff. Most of em end up like Doordarshan documentaries. Why dont our guys watch movies like “Braveheart”, “Patton”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Glory”, “El Cid” to learn how to make a historical movie? I still feel one of the best historicals to hit the screen in recent times has been Raj Kumar Santoshi’s “The Legend of Bhagat Singh”.
I for one believe historical movies should not be like a History Channel documentary, they should be engaging and at the same time not dumb down. Our guys either dumb down them so badly(”The Rising”) or turn them into yawn fests, though they might be intelligently written.
Ratnakar,
that is because (indian)directors/producers do not have the in infrastructural support on period films, like people have in hollywood.
Ratnakar,
Yup, The Legend of Bhagat Singh was a film that was honest to the core with sharp detailing and factual accuracy. When I saw Rang De Basanti, I didnt like all the events repeated in the film as the former one. But on the second viewing of RDB, I understood the point and liked their approach.
TLOBS definitely needs more mention and acknowledgement. It was a film that got muddled in the mediocre imitation-herd- wars of film makers. I could go on about all the perfect aspects of the film including the casting, music, and the art direction. Its amazing how Rahman approached 2 similar projects so distinctly and did fantastic work with both the songs and the BGM. A gem from TLOBS was Sarfaroshi ki tamanna, and also the oddball ’shora so pehchaniye’.
Another historical which I feel is up there is Ketan Mehta’s Sardar. I would not say Mangal Pandey disappointed me, but it was not up to the mark of Sardar. May be it was the lack of commercial constraints, but Sardar was a classic whereas Mangal Pandey was strictly OK, with its moments being there of course.
Hollywood, even with all its resources, has made bloopers in name of historicals. Point in case- Alexander, Troy, The Patriot.
I dont know if one could put Priyadarsan’s Kaalapani in the same league/genre, but that also was another memorable film.
Tushar, Kalapani was a great movie, though it was clearly inspired by Papillon. Oliver Stone should not be allowed any where near a historical. His JFK was full of half truths and less said about Alexander the better. I dont think in recent times Hollywood has come out with any good historical for that matter, except, The Last Samurai. Well Patriot, was again a historical blooper, but had good action sequences, and i never liked Gladiator much. It started off excellently, but later degenerated into a WWF spectacle with all that gore.
Sardar was a real good but very much underrated movie.
We were given this project in college where we had to choose one personality from the freedom struggle and trace his/her management skills. I still remember how I had to fight with my group mates when I wanted Sardar Patel. Finally, we saw the film once, twice, thrice and came up with a great presentation that used clips from the film.
I can never forget that film and the experience associated with it.
I still feel it was one of the best performances of Paresh Rawal, if not the best.
One misses the Ketan Mehta of those days now…