Rangoon ****
Dir: Vishal Bhardwaj. With: Kangana Ranaut, Shahid Kapoor,
Saif Ali Khan, Richard McCabe. 150 mins. Cert: 12A
In this time of pronounced division, it’s reassuring to know
East and West can still play nicely together. Vishal Bhardwaj, the director of
several impressive Shakespeare-goes-Hindi adaptations (Maqbool, Omkara), here
teams with sometime Spielberg screenwriter Matthew Robbins for a sweeping WW2
epic that ironically describes a collision of worlds: on one side of the
widescreen frame showbusiness, on the other the theatre of war. This being
Bollywood, the centre is occupied by a love triangle enacted by more
characterful types than those Pearl
Harbor excavated: a spoilt silver-screen goddess (Kangana Ranaut) drafted
to entertain British Indian Army troops in Burma, the suave yet possessive
one-armed impresario accompanying her (Saif Ali Khan) and the no-nonsense
soldier boy (Shahid Kapoor) left chaperoning our heroine after her convoy is
bombed.
The jungle-bound first half deliberately throws back to The African Queen, with Kapoor
toughening up his charge while generating old-school chemistry with Ranaut. Yet
as in his Kashmir-set Hamlet
adaptation Haider, Bhardwaj also
displays a sure feel for the wider conflicts surrounding his main players,
painting a vivid broad-strokes picture of an India divided between the
peaceable Gandhi and the punchier Subhas Chandra Bose, its British masters (capably
embodied by a bilingual Richard McCabe) and a new future for itself. Post-Slumdog, Hollywood and Bollywood have repeatedly attempted to collaborate,
with mixed results: here, they’ve produced a properly expansive and enthralling
afternoon matinee, owing as much to the David Lean back catalogue as it does to
the industry that gifted us Lagaan –
and those films didn’t have dance numbers about winding up Hitler.
Rangoon is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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