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from hindustaimes
SHAHEED
To start with, a warning. If you are not adequately informed about Bhagat Singh's life, the film is not going to make sense.
Whether the fault lies with the makers, the script or director, the loser is definitely the subject, and, by extension the audience. Bhagat Singh's legacy, already distorted by popular legend, is in serious risk of being further eradicated by the recent slew of films. And this film probably has the largest role to play in the distortion.
As for distortions or omissions, this film does not even once mention Singh's ardent belief in communism. The ideology may have fallen out of fashion, but when a film is being made on an actual person, his life's work has to be taken into account. His atheism finds the slightest of mentions. His humanism is more in keeping with latest family-saga trends.
On the other hand, this onscreen Bhagat Singh does do group dancing and bursts into song at the slightest of provocation, aspects that have little basis in his actual life. The film does not just dramatise Bhagat Singh's life, it totally twists most of his life beyond recognition.
What one ends up with is rabble-rousing account, a filmed version of calendar art. Full of one liners designed to draw claps or jeers from the front-benchers, the film manages to reshape Bhagat Singh's life into a fairly formula Bollywood film. All the prior noises about being sticklers to authenticity notwithstanding.
23 March… starts chronologically, with Bhagat Singh's childhood, his formative years in a martyr's family (his uncle Ajit Singh was actively involved in anti-British protest, and suffered for it), his involvement with Gandhi-led Non-cooperation Movement, his disillusionment with Gandhi after its withdrawl… and then it is confusion.
The rest of his life, in this film at least, somehow confused the makers. While Bhagat Singh's meeting Sukhdev and other close companions is missing, as is the formation of his party, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), events like the Dusshera ground bombing, or shooting Saunders, meeting with Chandrashekhar Azad, escape from Lahore in disguise, the jails stints are got garbled.
References to his love for books comes in the very last scene (in an uncanny similarity to Raj Kumar Santoshi's The Legend of Bhagat Singh). And don't seek his love for debating, his intellectualism, his intense belief in inqalab, not just against the British, but also against any oppressor, his desire for a more egalitarian society, in this film. Inexcusably Gandhi is absent too.
So what does the film have? An overdose of the Deol brothers. Despite Bobby's best efforts (he says so, at least), he is unable to do justice to the role. Neither does he look the part, nor more significantly can be muster up any of the fire and intensity that Bhagat Singh is supposed to have had. And there are utterances that would have profoundly maddened Bhagat Singh. And while Chandrashekhar Azad too had a great love for his country and played a significant part in the struggle against the British, his role in the film has him embroiled in Bhagat Singh's life far more than was actually the case. And Sunny's performance is only slightly less bombastic than his average.
Amrita Singh as Bhagat Singh's mother has too large a role and does it intrusively. On the other hand, Sukhdev, who was perhaps closest to Bhagat Singh, has been pushed to the sidelines. The rest are mere caricatures of the popular image of revolutionaries. For those on the lookout for Aishwarya, she just has a dance number and not a line word of dialogue.
It also has a soundtrack that is too intrusive and loud. Most of the scenes lack any imagination of conception. Production values aren't up to the mark. Recreating 1920's Lahore isn't a success in 23 March…. The idea seems to have been to finish production before the rival versions could.
If you want to see a film about Bhagat Singh, this is definitely not the one to see.
Suman Tarafdar Expert's Rating * and1/2 Viewers' Rating * and1/2
LOBS
Of all the firebrand revolutionaries who took on the might of the British Empire during India's freedom struggle, Bhagat Singh is, in a sense, the only man still standing in the nation's collective consciousness. Most of his heroic comrades have been gradually reduced to footnotes on the pages of history, remembered only occasionally in their little pockets of influence when it suits their political inheritors, but over 70 years after he was sent to the gallows at the age of 23, the legend of Bhagat Singh not only survives, it now seems to be on the verge of renewed growth. But could we please spare the great martyr the ignominy of a brazen Bollywood makeover? Must we bestow on him the status of the independence movement's greatest poster boy, a rebel with a glorious cause but a generally misunderstood approach? Nothing could be worse for Bhagat Singh than the fact that history has left him helplessly open to manipulation by Mumbai's profit-seeking filmmakers. Can you imagine denizens of tinsel town falling over each other quite in the same manner to make cinematic biographies on Chandrashekhar Azad or Jatin Das?
Much was expected of Rajkumar Santoshi's reconstruction of Bhagat Singh's life and times. In commercialised Hindi cinema, hopes die first, then substance goes for a toss and finally, if there is anything left to count, kitsch takes over. It would be wrong to say that none of the promise that this production held out is actually delivered, but the film is so overly cast in the hackneyed Bollywood melodramatic mould that it becomes rather difficult to tell where fact ends and fiction begins, and vice versa. It is certainly all very fine to underscore the glorious conduct of Bhagat Singh and his revolutionary mates, Sukhdev and Rajguru, as they marched to their death with a song on their lips and proud twinkles in their eyes: the very thought is enough to create a lump in the throat. But overkill is the style Santoshi adopts to rub in the tragedy. Really, who wants to hear the martyr utter corny lines like "Duniya kya kahegi, Bhagat Singh maut se darkar roya" (What will people say if I break down for the fear of death)?
Mercifully, such lines are few and far between and scenarist Anjum Rajabali and dialogue writer Piyush Mishra make a pretty strong impression for the most part, especially in the scenes where Bhagat Singh explains his political philosophy and his approach to the concept of total independence and plays them off against the Indian National Congress line. But, sadly, the script fights shy of touching upon the freedom fighter's atheism and his strong Marxist moorings. Both facts are half-heartedly tagged on to the fag end of the film: Bhagat Singh is shown reading Lenin's writings in his cell when he is led off to the Hanging Cell. And just before he is hanged, he lets one of the jail officials know that he does not believe in the existence God. Also largely glossed over is his mastery over political theories. His transition from Gandhian nationalism to revolutionary terrorism is established pretty early in the film while Bhagat Singh is still just a boy, but his shift to aggressive socialism is touched upon merely en passant.
If one can overlook the little quibbles, technically and in terms of production values, The Legend of Bhagat Singh is a rather stunning achievement. Especially well executed are the crowd sequences. The film opens with a rapid-fire montage of sequences from the martyr's life, followed by a scene in which the police, faced with rising tempers outside the jail, burn the bodies of the dead heroes on the banks of the Sutlej. Even more startling is the next scene – Mahatma Gandhi is confronted by an angry band of Bhagat Singh followers and accused of not doing enough to save him from death. Gandhi coolly reiterates his abhorrence of violence – that is why I was against the execution of Bhagat Singh, he tells the crowd – and walks away as shouts of "Gandhi hai hai" reverberate on the soundtrack. The rest of the film highlights the difference between the freedom struggle as run by the Congress and the kind independence that the revolutionaries dreamt of. Having seen the depths the nation has sunk to in the 50-odd years since Independence, it is easy to sympathise with Bhagat Singh's insistence on building a nation free of corruption, communal hatred and inequality, but is it really possible to accept the manner in which the film appears to denigrate the values that Gandhi stood for?
The effects of the commercial compulsions at work are pretty evident in the complement of songs and the presence in the storyline of an apocryphal woman who was supposedly in love with Bhagat Singh. While these ingredients do add to the melodramatic tinge and extend the film's length, they also significantly lower the tale's historicity. To Santoshi's credit, however, he extracts some truly remarkable performances from his actors. In the title role, Ajay Devgan delivers what must surely be rated as one his best performances. Totally in control, Devgan uses his piercing eyes and controlled dialogue delivery to carve out a convincing protagonist who bridges the gap between make-believe and reality. The supporting cast keeps pace with him: among those who deserve special mention are the mercurial Sushant Singh as Sukhdev and the robust Akhilendra Mishra as Chandrashekhar Azad.
For all its obvious failings, The Legend of Bhagat Singh is definitely worth a viewing.
Saibal Chatterjee Expert's Rating *** Viewers' Rating ***
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