Movie Review: Swades (2004)

There’s a moment in Swades, where after a power-cut during a festival, the villagers exclaim that the celebrations looked more beautiful without the electricity. It perfectly captures the mindset so many people get frustrated about in India. Broken Roads? “What can we do?”, People dying of COVID? “It was god’s wish!”. Worse than a broken system is the lack of will to change it, worse yet the inability to acknowledge it’s broken.

It also perfectly encapsulates Swades. Which at the heart of it, talks about reform on a local level. In this case a village, that must let go of the casteism to educate its kids, and wake up to the urgent need of better basic necessities. It takes an outsider for them to acknowledge that these issues exist in the first place.

But Swades doesn’t just stop there. It champions individual action, and confronts the brain drain, asking those who emigrated to the US, to use the privilege of their education to improve the lives of those at home.

Nobel thoughts, but Gowariker’s solutions like in Lagaan (2001) are often simplistic and often gloss over the repercussions of challenging age old maladies like caste in a village full of those who benefit from it. The reality doesn’t play like the Utopian town of Charanpur depicted here. The approach is largely naive, and an end that teeters on the verge of melodrama.

But Swades works because Shah Rukh Khan delivers a career best by a mile. The guy is the beating heart and soul of the film, his screen presence alone encapsulates the viewer.

Swades is a solid watch, despite its flaws. A 3.5/5 and an extra half star for spelling AND pronouncing Bhargava (pronounced Bh-(aar)-gov) correctly.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (worth watching)