Sandgroper's Movie Moments: The Rising - Ballad of Mangal Pandey

Imagine you are in a movie theater. Imagine you have the best seats. You are watching Braveheart and William Wallace is giving his famous "freedom" speech.

 

Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you'll live -- at least a while.
And dying in your beds many years from now,
would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that
they may take our lives, but they'll never take... our freedom!

And now imagine the army decides to take the "run and live" option and WW goes into battle all alone.

Might be the truth. But it doesn't make for great cinematic viewing. The Rising is a good movie, but something somewhere is missing. It begins well, the songs and situations are good as well. The performances, the feel of the era is commendable (though a mention of "hawa tight" sounds strange for the 1850's. This is a movie where the "aanewaali peedhi" (future generations) were shown as Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru.). The whole build up is kept well, but it ends flat like old soda. It reminded me of the Y2K bug, where after the huge buildup, nothing happened and people went on their own way. Probably this is why this movie did not do that well commercially. It had nothing that would have the audience leaving the cinema hall enthused and inspired (Lagaan, anyone?). Basically, the movie needs a Braveheart moment.

Seeing this movie taught me an important lesson. The speech in Braveheart was great. But the roar at the end of it was equally important, if not more from the perspective of the paying audience.

Cheers,
SG