Shah Rukh Week: Swades

Like many of Shah Rukh Khan's earlier films, Swades (2004) casts him as an NRI, a Non-Resident Indian, who returns to India for love and winds up transformed, both by the country and the aforementioned love.  It's a common trope in Indian cinema, practically a cliche, but in the right hands a cliched plot can still turn into something magical.

NASA engineer Mohan Barghava (Shah Rukh Khan) has a great job, a big house, good friends, and one regret: he's lost touch with Kaveri Amma (Kishori Ballal), his former nanny whom he thinks of as a second mother.  Mohan was studying in America when his parents died, and he wasn't in a position to take care of her.  They sent letters, but eventually the letters slowed and then stopped, and the last thing Mohan heard was that she had gone to live in a retirement home.

The good news is that his current project, a satellite designed to monitor global precipitation levels, has finished Phase 1, and his friend Vinod (Rahul Vorha) suggests he takes a couple of weeks off to find Kaveri and convince her to come to America.  Mohan travels to Delhi, visits the retirement home, and discovers that Kaveri has gone to a village in Uttar Pradesh called Charanpur.  

Mohan borrows an RV and sets off for the village.  After a travel montage and the help of a wandering holy man (Makrand Deshpande) he arrives at the village and has a tearful reunion with Kaveri.  She is staying with Gita (Gayatri Joshi), local school teacher and Mohan's childhood friend, and Gita's young brother Chiku (Smith Seth.)  The three have formed a happy family unit, and that is a problem for Mohan, because he still plans to bring his surrogate mother home with him, but it's clear that Gita is never going to give her up.

Kaveri is definitely not going to leave until Gita is settled in life, and she has two problems: it's next to impossible to arrange a marriage for her when she's not willing to give up her job after getting married, and the school is in danger of losing its building if she can't increase the number of students enrolled.  Mohan leaves Kaveri to handle the marriage side of things, and he goes around the village trying to convince parents to send their children to school.  And suddenly things start to get complicated.  the parents all have different reasons; some think their children are better off just learning the family trade, some feel they can't afford it or worry that their children won't fit in because of caste differences, and some just don't feel it's worthwhile educating girls when they should be learning how to run a household.  Mohan listens, and pleads his case, and he has some success.

There's a thread running through a lot of older Shah Rukh movies where his character winds up staying with the extended family of his love interest, usually under false pretenses, and he winds up making everybody's lives better, almost by accident.  That's sort of what happens here, but with the village taking the place of Amrish Puri and the assorted aunts and uncles.  Mohan does increase enrollment, and he at least challenges caste barriers during a wonderful and surprisingly low key dance number, but at the same time he's putting down roots, making friends, and starting to see the struggles of the people around him.

After meeting a destitute farmer in a neighboring village, Mohan decides that he needs to do something tangible to help the people before he leaves.  The electricity supply in the village is unreliable, with frequent blackouts, and the government is always promising that the problem will be fixed in a month or so but it never is.  However, there's water flowing from the mountain nearby, so Mohan decides to build a small hydroelectric plant.

Meanwhile, he's been growing closer and closer to Gita, and she finally, quietly, admits that she loves him.  The early bickering is fun, but the relationship that develops is simple and sweet, based on mutual respect and support.  It's also pretty much doomed, because Gita will never leave India, and Mohan has to return to America.  Doesn't he?

The plot of Swades is not that far from typical masala fare; it's surprisingly close to Khan's 1996 film English Babu Desi Mem, for instance.  The tone is wildly different, though.  Swades is more grounded, rooted in simple village life.  The emotions are still huge, but the characters don't have an army of backup dancers to help express them.

Given the more grounded tone of the film you might think that Khan would deliver a more subdued and naturalistic performance, but he Shah Rukhs the heck out of this movie, with plenty of crying, standing with arms outstretched, all of his other tics.  And it works beautifully.  Without the glitz and glamor, Khan feels sincere, and this is a movie that thrives on sincerity.  Perhaps the most pivotal moment in Mohan's character development involves drinking a glass of water, and Khan sells it beautifully.

Swades is a polished jewel of a movie, with a simple story driven by strong performances and quiet moments, lifted up by A. R. Rahman's magnificent score.

And normally that is where I would end the review, but there is a coda, and it is bonkers.  In 2022's superhero epic Brahmastra: Part One, Khan appears as Mohan Bhargav, respected scientist and secret super hero who wields the power of the Vanastra.  Mohan used to work for NASA, and his Mumbai apartment is filled with space memorabilia.  He's clearly modeled on the Mohan from Swades, and writer-director Ayan Mukherji (who started his career as an assistant director for Swades) has confirmed that it's supposed to be the same character.

It makes a kind of sense, I guess?  Brahmastra is anything but low key, but both movies are ultimately about learning to love the people around you, and letting that love drive you to make the world a better place.  Still, I did not expect Swades to retroactively become a superhero origin story.