Rang De Basanti

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra took seven years to research and develop the story, including three to write the script.[4] While some raised doubts about his morale following the failure of his last film, Aks, at the box office, he retorted by saying that it would not affect him at all.[5] He added that not only did his storytelling technique improve, but past mistakes had helped him improve his filmmaking abilities.[6]

Rakeysh said the following in a scriptwriter's conference conducted by the Film Writers Association in the year 2008, "I was making a documentary called Mamooli Ram, on Amul, the milk revolution with Kamalesh Pandey. We were sitting in a small hotel room in Nanded, drinking. We started singing songs, and we both realized we liked similar songs. And so Rang De Basanti was born. He was angry with the system, I was helpless with the system. We wanted to do so much. But we really can't do anything and it was born out of anger. He wrote a story called Ahuti, meaning sacrifice. Ahuti was about the armed revolution in India, between the years 1919 and 1931. It started with Ashfaqullah Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, went on to Chandrashekhar Azad and so on. We had this amazing screenplay called Ahuti, which we had also termed as The Young Guns of India, which started with a train robbery, Azad on a horse and so on. I said, "let's do The Young Guns of India". We were going to go on the floor, and suddenly there were a couple of film on Bhagat Singh made. But they came and went. Not because they were good or bad films, not because they were written badly or not written so badly. I'm not being judgmental about them. And this is very important: because they did not reflect the sentiment of today's time. Nobody in the audience could identify with something which was past. It wasn't that there wasn't an idea of patriotism in us, but it was sleeping somewhere. And you had to kind of relate to it in today's world. So a couple of bottles of vodka again, and three days later, with a couple of vodkas down, Kamlesh Ji comes up with 'You know what, I think I've cracked it'."[7]

Development of Rang De Basanti originated with several ideas Mehra came up with early on but later dropped or greatly evolved into new directions. One of these involved a group of youngsters who worked in an automobile repair shop, while another was about the life of Bhagat Singh, Indian freedom revolutionary.[6] During this time, he personally conducted a survey with a group of youths in New Delhi and Mumbai about the Indian revolutionaries he was planning on depicting, which indicated that many of youngsters did not recognise the names of some of the most prominent revolutionaries. This led Mehra to believe that the sense of "patriotism had blurred" in the young generation.[6] Because of this, he dropped his original plans in favour of a new idea in which a British documentary filmmaker on a visit to India realizes that the local "kids are more Western than her".[6] This new story, which eventually formed the basis for Rang De Basanti's script, was influenced by Mehra's upbringing, youth and experiences over the years,[4] including his desire to join the Indian Air Force while in school, as well as his recollections of listening to Independence Day speeches and watching patriotic films such as Mother India.[6] Although Mehra denies that the film is autobiographical, he confessed that the character sketches were loosely inspired by himself and his friends.

Mehra approached Angad Paul after having been impressed with his production work on British films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Paul, who was keen to work in India, liked Mehra's story and agreed to produce the film,[8] bringing with him David Reid and Adam Bohling as executive producers. Despite having no prior knowledge of Hindi cinema, Reid and Bohling's belief in the script was strong enough that they each were willing to work at half their normal rate.[9] While it was originally suggested that language versions of the film would be made concurrently, in English (as Paint it Yellow) and Hindi,[5][10] the plans for an English version were dropped during development. Mehra believed that English-language version felt alien and that "one can tell a film in just one language".[6] After the English version was dropped, the writer Kamlesh Pandey was brought on board to pen the first draft of Rang De Basanti in Hindi,[6] marking the start of his screenwriting career.[11] Thereafter Mehra and co-writer Rensil D'Silva took over the script, working on it for about two years.[6] Prasoon Joshi, the film's lyricist, worked on the dialogue, marking his foray into screenwriting.[12]

Rang De Basanti suffered a significant setback when one of the initial producers ultimately failed to contribute any funds towards it; the shortfall left production looking uncertain just two months away from the beginning of principal photography. However, after Aamir Khan agreed to act in the film, Mehra approached Ronnie Screwvala of UTV Motion Pictures with the script.[6] Screwvala, who supported Mehra from the beginning of the production, had faith in the film,[13] reasoning that in historical films, "the treatment and execution is very different from regular masala fare",[14] and that such films "find favour with the audience owing to their elaborate sets and period costumes".[14] The budget was reported as Rs. 250 million (approximately US$5.5 million),[9] and, despite going a little over the initially planned budget, Mehra did not have any serious disagreements with UTV.[6]

The film's script originally had a different climax, originally showing the protagonists on the run. The climax was rewritten, as the idea of them running away wasn't liked mutually, as they should have the last stand resembling that of Bhagat Singh. Years earlier, Khan had written his own story with the climax in a radio station, which he adapted for the climax of Rang De Basanti.[3]

Aamir Khan agreed to act in Rang De Basanti immediately after reading Mehra's script.[9] Mehra described his character as a simple man with a strong sense of integrity and dignity.[8] Khan, who would turn 40 during the shoot, lost about 10 kilograms (22 lb) with a strict diet and exercise regime to more convincingly depict a man in his late twenties.[9] Atul Kulkarni and Kunal Kapoor were publicly attached to the film by the time it was officially announced;[8] Kapoor had been the assistant director to Mehra during the filming of Aks and was already familiar with the material Mehra had been developing.[15] Mehra gave Kulkarni biographies of Ram Prasad Bismil as preparation, including Bismil's autobiography.[16] Early rumours indicated that actors Arjun Rampal and Arjan Bajwa would be amongst the male leads,[17][18] but these roles ultimately were filled by Siddharth and Sharman Joshi. Mehra and Khan also offered Siddharth's role to Hrithik Roshan, but he declined in favour of Krrish (2006).[19] Daniel Craig was offered the role of James McKinley, but he could not do it as he was committed to Casino Royale (2006).[20]

Rang De Basanti marked Siddharth's Bollywood debut, following on the success of his Telugu film Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana. Having previously worked as an assistant director, Siddharth praised Mehra as being "by far the most ambitious technical filmmaker in Indian cinema".[21] R. Madhavan, despite being a well-known Tamil cinema actor, took the smaller role of a fighter aircraft pilot because he was convinced of the film's potential and wanted to be a part of it.[22] Om Puri appears in a two-scene cameo as Aslam's staunch Muslim father.

Soha Ali Khan and Alice Patten immediately became Mehra's clear favourites for each of their roles during casting,[23] which led to Patten flying to Mumbai for a screen test with the entire cast. She was informed that she had won the documentary filmmaker role after she returned home to the United Kingdom.[24] Soha, portraying the pilot's fiancée, was filming Rituparna Ghosh's Antarmahal and David Dhawan's comedy Shaadi No. 1 concurrently with her work in Rang De Basanti. In particular, the demands of her emotional scenes in Antarmahal often left her exhausted, thus requiring "a lot of personal overhauling" to ensure that her performance in Rang De Basanti was unaffected.[25] During filming, reports indicated that co-stars Siddharth and Soha had become romantically involved with each other.[26] Alongside the two lead actresses, Lakh Tandon played the role of Aamir's Grand Father and Kirron Kher played the mother of Khan's character.

The film, which was shot in New Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan and Punjab,[27] was officially launched at a hotel on 1 February 2005.[28] When shooting began, Mehra made an announcement to his crew saying that they would enjoy their holiday only in July.[9]

Instead of filming at the actual locations from the script, other locations were selected for picturisation. One such scene is where Soha Ali Khan is filmed at the India Habitat Center that masquerades as the University of Delhi. On similar lines, New Delhi's Modern School at Barakhamba Road served as the location for all the scenes pertinent to All India Radio station, which is shown to be stormed by the youngsters in the film.[29] The Delhi Tourism department was happy to encourage filming in the city if it helped promote tourism, though any filming near India Gate was prohibited due to the ensuing bureaucratic paperwork.[29] Similar issues with bureaucracy were faced by Mehra while filming at the Jaipur Fort. To use a historical location for filming, they had to seek permissions of seven officials ranging from the local police to the Archaeological Survey of India office.[30] Nahargarh Fort, which oversees the city of Jaipur, was another such historical location where one of the songs was filmed.[31] Besides these locations, the filming was also done at Amritsar's Harmandir Sahib Gurudwara. For Aamir Khan, a Muslim, it was for the first time that he was playing a North Indian Punjabi character and it took him some time to get the right dialect and diction.[32] While speaking about his experience of visiting the Gurudwara for the first time, he said:

It's one of the most peaceful places I've been to. As you enter the place there's a certain serenity that surrounds you. I really enjoyed being there. The first shot we took was of our feet entering the water just as you pass the doorway of the temple. The water was cold but it was great![32]

Once the locations were finalised, the team of Lovleen Bains and Arjun Bhasin was chosen for designing the look of Rang De Basanti. Bhasin had previously worked on Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996) and Dil Chahta Hai (2001), the latter of which featured Aamir Khan, and he was referred to Mehra by Khan due to their previous association. Since the film's plot focused on men in their late twenties, Bhasin designed their look accordingly. Although he was responsible for Khan's rebellious look, Sharman Joshi's (who played Sukhi) lovable persona or Madhavan's dignified appearance, Bhasin credited Bains for her major contributions to the film.[33] Khan's hair was styled by Avan Contractor, who came up with soft curls falling over Khan's forehead. This new look, which took Contractor one hour to come up with, surprised the audience at the film's launch.[28]

In post-production, the visual effects were handled by Tata Elxsi's Visual Computing Labs. The military aircraft they created was so realistic that the Indian Air Force called to check the producer's permission of using an actual MiG-21.[34]

Critics gave the film an overwhelmingly positive response, in particular the ensemble cast's performance and credibility. Although The Indian Express spoke positively of the cinematography and the film's story, it noted that "the message that the film carries with it tends to get diluted towards the climax.[77] Praising the film's cast for their performance and the cinematography of Binod Pradhan, Taran Ardash wrote that the film would be successful with the urban audiences.[77] The Hindustan Times summarised the film as being a "well-scripted, skilfully crafted [and] thought-provoking entertainer".[78] Saisuresh Sivaswamy of Rediff.com wrote that films like Rang De Basanti can easily get into "preachiness", but believed Mehra got his message across while avoiding this, also appreciating the music, cinematography, dialogues and art direction.[79] The Hindu credited Kamlesh Pandey for writing a story that would have been a difficult film to make, but it added by saying that the transformation of the youngsters into heroes seemed poetic. Although the screenplay, direction and the cast were also well-appreciated, the reviewer felt that Rahman's soundtrack lacked pace.[80]

The film also received positive reviews from critics outside India. The review from the BBC gave it the highest possible five star rating and added that it was "an entertaining mix of romance, history and social commentary".[81] The Bloomberg website wrote positively about "the raw energy of a young cast and A. R. Rahman's splendidly rousing soundtrack".[82]

Sight & Sound magazine conducts a poll every ten years of the world's finest film directors to find out the Ten Greatest Films of All Time. This poll has been going since 1992, and has become the most recognised[83] poll of its kind in the world. In 2012[84] Cyrus Frisch voted for "Rang De Basanti". Frisch commented: "Corruption became the subject of fierce debate in India after the major success of this film among youngsters."

The film was mentioned in critic and author Shubhra Gupta's book, 50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995–2015.[85]

A major point of criticism the film faced was regarding the possibility of the Indian Army attacking students in a radio station. When Rakeysh was questioned about the same in a scriptwriter's conference conducted by the Film Writers Association in the year 2008, he said the following, "So, in 2005, in Allahabad, a bunch of 4 students took the TV station there, and they were shot dead. Everything I did, it was kind of borrowed, as I said right here. Obviously, what I am also learning is the way I tell a story is not real; you can term it as a-real. For maximum impact, for the message to go through, I felt—since the story was against the establishment—let the establishment do it. After all, the establishment did hang Bhagat Singh. After all, the establishment did come down on the innocent, innocent students in Mandal Commission. After all the establishment did come down on Tiananmen Square. After all the establishment did come down when the whole concept of Flower Power emerged in America. So it's all there. It's borrowed, maybe not as realistically, but it is definitely there in the society. During emergency, there are horror stories. If we have to go back to Kriplani and his movement in Bihar, the stories are absolutely horrific."[86]

Since the film "reflected contemporary Indian reality and had cinematic excellence", it was chosen as India's official entry for the 79th Academy Awards despite stiff competition from films such as Krrish, Omkara, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna and Lage Raho Munna Bhai.[87][88] While discussing if the selection committee's choice was correct, critics felt that the Academy members could have better related with Omkara, an adaptation of Shakespeare's play Othello.[78][89] Despite these qualms and Mehra's belief that his film did not stand a chance at the Oscars,[90] the efforts to publicise the film in the United States began earnestly. Music composer A. R. Rahman performed several concerts across the East Coast to promote the film. Besides his efforts, producer Screwvala planned to use resources and expertise from his partners in 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney Pictures for organising its publicity efforts.[91] When the nominations in the foreign film category did not feature this film, it sparked off debates on whether the film should have been India's entry for the Oscars. In one such debate on a television channel that involved Screwvala, the selection committee was questioned about its knowledge of the requisite artistic criteria for such award ceremonies. While one outcome of the debate was on how Omkara would have been a better choice, the other discussed the West-centric sensibilities of the Academy members. However, results from a simultaneously conducted SMS poll indicated that 62 percent felt that the film was the right choice for the Oscars.[92]