Rang De Basanti

Aroview: Progressive Bollywood fare bypasses musical melodrama for an overarching tale of history and self-discovery, guided by a British-Indian filmmaker who, upon uncovering the memoirs of her dead grandfather, resolves to adapt them into a movie.

Sue (Patten), however, encounters the apathy of modern youth in casting five young friends to play the revolutionaries described in her grandfather’s diaries. Their disinterest in India’s pre-independence era thus prompts the film’s earnest ascent into rites-of-passage mode, though it never strays too far from its historical gravity (a 1930s timeline is envisioned skillfully in parallel to present day events). A familiar lesson in ancestry and sacrifice of the past, this is nonetheless distinctive Hindi cinema, bolstered by a thoughtful view of contemporary India with added commercial smarts.