28 Sep 2006
Basanti, Wapas Aa Jaa!
So they send Rang De Basanti (RDB) to the Oscars. It confounds me how the jury manage to goof up with such consistency! Year after year, they send a film that cannot make it even to the top 25 competing for the best foreign film award. Not that Oscars are the benchmark for quality (remember, Titanic won a bagful of awards!) - they cannot beat Cannes as regards that, but the movies that compete for foreign film award are definitely great. And we send inferior stuff.
RDB is, without doubt, a better flick than most other bollywood crap. And it's surely among the better ones in the past few years. But how good is it when pitted against the best films from across the world? Thank goodness they don't send such stuff to Cannes. I feel it's better to not send any movie at all rather than send a passable one and make a bad presentation of our filmmaking. It's one thing to do good at a game in one's backyard and a totally different thing to play against the best in the world.
I doubt if the chaps in the jury ever watched movies made by our own Satyajit Ray. If they did, they would know how the best in the world movies ought to be. And if they know that, they wouldn't commit such blunders. Ray won more awards at Cannes than any other filmmaker in the world. No filmmaker in the country makes movies of the quality that Ray had made. I just hope some chap comes up with great stuff and makes it good at Cannes again.
Till then, let's not send any movie to the Oscars. It's better to send one Aparajito in five years than ten RDBs every year.
Current Mood: Happy
Current Music: ---
Comments (2) Trackbacks (0) Permalink
By Vj
29 Sep 2006, 11:43am [ Reply ]
Have you watched Satyajit Ray's movies? Watched any of these movies - Aparajito, Apur Sansar, Ashani Sanket, Pather Panchali, Pratidwandi, Amelie, Why Was I Born?, My Daddy, The Bicycle Thief, Battleship Potemkin? A 'good' movie isn't good enough to be a 'great' movie.
By CT
28 Sep 2006, 10:50pm [ Reply ]
I think it takes more than a flair for writing to understand movies of the genre of RDB.It is definitely a movie ahead of its times.I personally think Oscars are no benchmark to judge a movie's credibility, specially one that is foreign to 'American' understanding but if any movie deserves to be judged for its overall brilliance , RDB is definitely the one!!!