Unforgettable

While living in Boston, my only link to Indian cinema and Bollywood, was a few hours of weekend Indian programming on a nondescript channel called AZN (thanks Comcast :-)). Apart from a few filmy shows that included extensive coverage of Bollywood stars visiting/shooting in the US, they also played a Hindi movie on Sundays. Two movies from then have lived in memory: Lakshya and Swades. I'd watched Lakshya in India earlier, but Swades was new. One of my friends who'd watched it in a cinema hall had commented that it was a glorified Doordarshan documentary, passed off as a semi-commercial movie.

But, I must admit, Swades is probably one of the best made Hindi movies I've seen. Luckily, it played twice on AZN and I was able to catch it both times. Earlier today, I came across this review/critique/defence which seems to incorporate a lot of the reasons why Swades is dear to me.

If you haven't seen it already, I'd suggest you do, just to be convinced that Shah Rukh Khan can surely act. He is marvellous in the movie... probably his best performance till date (better than even Chak De India in my opinion).