News for
The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey (2005) More at IMDbPro »

ad feedback

3 items from 2005

4 August 2005 | The Hollywood Reporter | See recent The Hollywood Reporter news »

Locarno International Film Festival,

Piazza Grande (World Premiere)

Ketan Mehta's sweeping epic, The Rising -- Ballad of Mangal Pandey, is a kind of Bollywood Braveheart as one courageous and doomed man confronts the might of the British Empire, plus there's singing and dancing.

Sumptuously designed and beautifully shot, the film will delight Bollywood fans but likely will fail to capture mainstream audiences with its melodramatic style and jarring combination of stirring action, brutality and musical numbers.

For 100 years, the East India Company was the face of the British Empire, ruling one-fifth of the world and dominating the Indian subcontinent with the help of 300,000 Hindu and Muslim soldiers called Sepoys.

In Mehta's tale, the introduction of a new rifle in 1853 brought down the most successful private company in history. The rifle used a cartridge that soldiers had to bite the end of in order to pour the powder into the barrel. But the company used the grease of pigs and cows to seal the cartridges, and so placing them in their mouths violated the Sepoys' faiths.

Mangal Pandey (Aamir Khan) is one of the bravest Sepoys, having served with distinction in places like Afghanistan's Khyber Pass, where he saved the life of Capt. William Gordon (Toby Stephens).

At first, trusting the Company lie that the cartridges do not use pig or cow grease, Pandey bites the bullet, but when the truth is revealed, he leads the Sepoy in a rebellion that for the first time unites all the various creeds, tribes and castes of the region. It sows the seeds for the end of the East India Company's reign, though India would not gain its independence from Britain for about another century.

The saga is told in black-and-white terms with a clear division between good guys and bad guys. The dastardly villains are the ones in the red uniforms who speak as if they've just swallowed a plum. The only good British officer is, inevitably, Scottish.

The Bollywood style is so bouncy and optimistic, however, that it's difficult to sustain the effect of an oppressed nation when everyone, even untouchables and slave girls, all appear so jolly. The hero is savagely beaten by five Company men, but shortly afterward he joins the beautiful pleasure house girl Heera (Rani Mukherji) in a jaunty dance number.

Although the film is expertly rooted in its period, Heera seems to have been parachuted in from the 21st century with her cover girl eyes and MTV choreography.

There are many bold statements about freedom and peoples' rights to their own cultures and faiths and a suggestion that there are modern versions of the East India Company at work in the world, which might well be true, but the message gets a bit lost amid all the happy singing people.

The Rising -- Ballad of Mangal Pandey

Kalaidoscope Entertainment & Inox Leisure Ltd. & TFK Films present a Kaleidoscope Entertainment & Maya Movies production

Credits:

Director: Ketan Mehta

Screenwriter: Farrukh Dhondy

Producers: Bobby Bedi, Deepa Sahi

Director of photography: Himman Dhamija

Production designer: Nitin Chandrakant Desai

Editor: Sreekar Prasad

Composer: A.R. Rahmaan

Cast:

Mangal Pandey: Aamir Khan

Capt. William Gordon: Toby Stephens

Heera: Rani Mukherji

Emily Kent: Coral Beed

Veer Pretap: Amin Hajee

Lol Bibi: Kiron Kher

Jwala: Ameesha Patel

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 150 minutes »

Permalink | Report a problem

4 August 2005 | The Hollywood Reporter | See recent The Hollywood Reporter news »

LOCARNO, Switzerland -- With the out-of-competition screening of the Bollywood film The Rising -- Ballad of Mangal Pandey at its famed Piazza Grande, the 58th Locarno Film Festival kicked off Wednesday. The first official competition screenings are scheduled for Thursday. A total of 18 films best described as multicultural-niche are vying for the Golden Leopard and its prize of 90,000 Swiss francs ($71,337). Two Silver Leopard awards also will be handed out, along with a special jury prize and a Leopard for best male and female performance. »

Permalink | Report a problem

27 July 2005 | The Hollywood Reporter | See recent The Hollywood Reporter news »

ROME -- Two more titles were added Wednesday to this year's lineup of films in competition for the Locarno International Film Festival's Golden Leopard prize. They are Canadian director Louise Archambault's Familia and Yvan Le Moine's Vendredi ou un Autre Jour, a Belgium-France-Italy co-production. The new titles join 15 others announced last week. Festival organizers also said that Susan Sarandon will be on hand to receive an excellence award and that the opening film in the Piazza Grande will be Ketan Mehta's The Rising -- Ballad of Mangal Pandey. The festival runs Aug. 3-13. »

Permalink | Report a problem

3 items from 2005