It’s fitting that Cinapse has just covered Malcolm X as part of our Spike X Denzel retrospective; I went ahead and turned it into a double feature by pairing it with another revolutionary biopic: The Legend of Bhagat Singh, a Hindi-language epic directed by Rajkumar Santoshi and featuring a score composed by A. R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire, 2.0).
If Mahatma Gandhi was the “MLK” of colonial India’s independence movement, (King modeled his nonviolence approach after Gandhi), then you might call Bhagat Singh the Malcolm X.
The film is historical in its narrative, but expressionistic and melodramatic in its approach. Like most Indian films, it’s a musical with several songs in the mix.
The film tells the life story of the revolutionary and martyr Bhagat Singh (Ajay Devgn), who became disillusioned with Gandhi’s nonviolent approach to defying British rule. Singh, a secular atheist, became a key player in the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), quickly rising to a role in the group’s leadership – it evolved into the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) in part as a result of his influence.
The HSRA’s methods were designed to be disruptive and included calculated acts of violence and symbolic terrorism specifically designed to draw attention rather than cause harm. The group was critical of Gandhi, just as he was critical of them. Interestingly, Gandhi’s portrayal in the film is actually a rare negative one, and his role is mostly adversarial.
Singh is portrayed by prolific actor Ajay Devgn, and this is one of his most famous roles, though he’s better known to western audiences as Raju’s father (“Load, Aim, Shoot”) in RRR – another militant revolutionary hero and martyr, most likely cast specifically as a hat tip to Devgn’s famous portrayal of Singh.
I was completely ignorant of Baghat Singh before watching the film, so this was my introduction to the historical figure. It’s been interesting learning (from both the film and subsequent reading) about this side of history, especially in contrast with Gandhi, the far more famous anticolonial activist. As always, don’t take your history lessons exclusively from movies (or people who write about them), but as introductions go, this was a pretty solid one.
About the Blu-ray
The Legend of Bhagat Singh is offered as a region-free MOD (manufactured on demand, or “burned”) Blu-ray disc from Leomark Studios. Also burned are the subtitles, meaning they can’t be turned off. The disc has no featurettes or extras.
The subs are serviceable, having a handful of minor typos but generally being sensible and easy to follow.
Picture quality is fine – not great, but good enough. There’s a small amount of horizontal distortion that’s rarely noticeable but sometimes exhibits itself as a zig-zag artifact. Here’s one of the more obvious examples where you can see the straight lines manifesting a stair-step pattern.
A/V Out
Get it at Amazon: The Legend of Bhagat Singh Blu-ray
