This one's a very amusing film, with everything we love about Bollywood - side plots, song and dance numbers, weddings, and incredibly fast cuts - though at a mere 144 minutes it's shorter than most.The story: goon gets in touch with his inner Gandhi - and you can, too! (You might recognize Gandhi in the clouds in the poster at right. In the film, Gandhi actually appears and advises the protagonist on how to win over the object of his affection!) The actor playing the goon (in red in the poster) is Sanjay Dutt, who's just been convicted of some kind of involvement in the Mumbai bombings 17 years ago. I gather the film's part of a series about a pair of lovably clueless goons. But on its own this makes an entertaining and even eloquent case for the continued effectiveness - and strangeness - of Gandhian nonviolence, a tradition largely forgotten (alleges the film) in India today.
My father thinks a "morality play" like this wouldn't fly in America; I wonder. We have our share of heart-warming stories where the old ways prove their continued worth, not to mention an endless litany of films on the salvation of repentant hit-men (a genre I've never understood, perhaps because I've never owned a gun?). Maybe Gandhi's too iconoclastic for our morality plays...
