ROJA by Shrestha

Aasish Shrestha

Review #1

ROJA

As a fan of bollywood movies, I did not enjoy watching Roja nor found it bollywood-esque (except for the song sequences). Anyways, Roja was originally a Tamil film (which explains all of the bad dubbing and screenplay mix-up which I will explain later) directed by acclaimed Indian filmmaker Mani Ratnam. This was THE film that introduced him to a broader audience and gained critical and commercial success in bollywood after it was dubbed in Hindi. The film went on to win numerous awards and acclaim including National and International Film Awards in the popular category. This film also led Ratnam to spawn two similar concept/genre films making Roja the first of his domestic terrorism trilogy.

Roja is named after the heroine in the film, played by Madhoo. Roja is the typical village girl, innocent, religious, and sweet. I was under the impression that she was uneducated since she was brought up in the village, but there is a scene within the first song sequence of her in a cap and gown, and she even goes on to speak some English in the movie. Maybe the English was part of the Hindi dubbing or maybe not. Maybe she does say “I Love You” or spell “Sorry” in the Tamil version too. I don’t know why we didn’t just watch it in the original Tamil version, maybe to make the film more bollywood-esque (just kidding Prof. Brueck). Back to the movie… Roja is seen praying several times to a Hindu god with hopes that her sister finds a good groom and that their marriage would occur soon. This shows her as the ideal little sister. Then arrives the hero, Rishi, played by Arvind Swamy. Upon secretly seeing him, Roja describes him as fair and attractive to her sister. Rishi came to the village from the city, where he is some kind of a scientist, to find a bride who was born and raised in the village. Rishi and Roja’s sister finally meet, only to find out that she is in love with someone else, someone who her family opposes. Rishi, being the kind and compassionate man, complies with her request and asks for Roja’s hand in marriage instead. After, everyone’s shock and confusion, everything goes accordingly. Roja’s sister weds her lover and Rishi and Roja also marry. Then, they move to the city where everyone is happy except for Roja. Roja thinks Rishi rejected her sister and what not but she soon finds out what really happened and everything is okay again. Until now, the movie seemed interesting but it starts to get complicated.

In the beginning, a terrorist named Wasim Khan was captured by the Indian Army. So, his terrorist group, who are a bunch of Muslims, strives to free their leader by capturing an Indian hostage. Coincidentally, this hostage becomes none other than our hero Rishi, who was sent to Kashmir for work reasons. Before the kidnapping, the newly married couple sing and dance in what I thought was the beautiful Kashmir, but later found out wasn’t. Anyways, the movie starts to go downhill from here when Roja goes off to pray in a nearby temple and Rishi goes to look for her. He finds Roja, only to get kidnapped by a group of masked men with guns. I find this all to be Roja’s fault and begin to hate her throughout the rest of the movie. She rushes to the police and informs them of what just happened but they fail to understand her even though she was speaking Hindi. This was obviously a dubbing mistake which I later understood that she was supposed be speaking Tamil and the city police/politicians didn’t speak Tamil. The demands of the terrorists were that they would free Rishi only upon the release of Wasim Khan. Roja is portrayed as naïve, selfish, and stupid because she doesn’t care about the country and only wants her husband back. There was a time when a police guy explained to her of the consequences of releasing Wasim Khan, who was evil and murdered a lot of people, but Roja never learned and remains ignorant. Then, there is Rishi, who is the ever patriotic and noble citizen. He never gives in to the terrorists and doesn’t care about Hindus vs. Muslims; he only believes in one thing, that they are all Indians.

The Muslim terrorists want Kashmir for their own and are fighting for their freedom and independence. However, for terrorists, an ordinary man like Rishi is able to beat them all up while handcuffed. This sums up all the corny parts that lead to the infamous “G.I. Joe Flaming Pants” scene where Rishi is putting out the burning Indian flag with his crotch. Some scenes in the movie may seem ridiculous but in the time of its release, Roja was very significant and made a huge impact to Indians and politics. After all of Roja’s plead for Wasim Khan’s release, the nation sympathizes with her and gives in to the terrorists’ demand. The movie portrayed Muslims as the villains and Islam as anti-national, however there are also scenes showing their good side. In Ratnam’s films, like Roja and Dil Se, terrorists are usually the people that are fighting for freedom and independence. In Roja, the terrorists were nice enough to feed Rishi, giving him good hospitality at first, and even saying that the kidnapping was nothing personal.

The movie invokes national pride by reconstructing secular India as Hindu nationalist. Roja is a patriotic love story. The village girl and the city guy uniting is a symbol for the nation coming together. The plot of the movie is like a nation being divided, like Roja and Rishi, and then reuniting in the end. Roja is a symbol for traditional India. She is the allegorical desire in the sense of a selfish state. She is the young bride who is immature but represents those who rebel against their government. Rishi is a symbol for modern India. He was the ordinary middle class person involved in a national conflict. He is patriotic citizen who would rather starve and die than to give in to terrorists. The characters show how simple, descent, and patriotic people can appeal to the human in military and even terrorists. Roja served as symbols of Hindu nationalism with scenes like Rishi putting out the burning flag and his incessant saying of “Jai Hind”, meaning “Hail India”. The film dealt with mostly the middle class, and turned out to be really popular among the middle class audiences. The theme of the movie is humanity and what life is and what it’s worth. In the end, the terrorist understands this by stating to wipe tears instead of causing them.

I didn’t really enjoy the music in the movie but it must be a big deal since it was all composed by Academy Award winner A.R. Rahman. This was Rahman’s first feature film in which he produced the songs. The music was highly praised by fans and critics alike, and went on to win major awards and transformed Rahman into not only India, but also one of the world’s greatest music composers. The music was also one of the firsts in bollywood to have explicit content. The song after Rishi and Roja’s marriage uses explicit ways to express sex. This was a great filmmaking technique to show the village culture as well. To be honest, I did not like the Hindi version we watched of this movie or anything about it and would not recommend it to anyone. Please watch the original Tamil version so it would make sense to first time viewers. Other than that, this movie wasn’t all that good but I highly recommend its follow up, Bombay, which I thought was surprisingly GREAT! I thought this movie was the worst movie we’ve seen thus far because I did not like the actors, the music, the entire plot, and was bored throughout the movie and wanted it to end one hour into the movie. Maybe I would have appreciated it more if I had seen it at the time of its release during the early 90s. But watching it in 2010 was just painful. I guess it was a little less painful than Devdas since it wasn’t black and white. Also, at the end, I kept thinking, “What was the point of this movie?” I didn’t really get the movie until we actually discussed it in class and realized that the whole Hindi dubbing mistake and its importance in the early 90s dealing with Kashmir and turning it into a love story like Titanic and every other movie or love story.