Although farmer's suicides are a serious problem, I am not one of those killjoys who claim that one cannot make use of satire to depict a serious problem. My advice to those would be to go read Srilal Shukla's Hindi novel 'Rag Darbari'. Thus, I am already empathetic to the film's message and form; the same goes for its portrayal of media and politicians as ruthless - which should come as no surprise to anyone who watches television and who has an iota of intelligence. Having said that, I must confess that the film was a big let-down.
Both the script and the direction were hurried. Most scenes just seemed to finish too early, as if there were so many check-boxes to be checked before the film got over in its 100-odd minutes. On the other hand, there were not too many points to be made - once the media and the politicians enter the frey, the film has nothing more (or original) to say and it seems to get breathless just saying nothing, but making it a shouting match of saying nothing, to make things worse. Scatological jokes, swear-words relying on the infidelities of sisters and mothers, or on various parts of the anatomy are not new to me - they don't offend me, but I don't get cheap thrills just because someone on screen utters them either. So the jokes seemed just juvenile. More seriously, as a friend pointed out, the end is more or less copied from "No Man's Land", which won the foreign film Oscar when Amir's Lagaan was in the race, so this seems like a way of getting a kick out of copying your (better) adversary.
I am sorry to say, but I don't get impressed by such things. Neither do I get fresh insights into the plights of the Indian farmers by watching such silly films. If you need to get entertained by Indian villagers while still getting some serious insights about India and its problems, I will recommend 'Rag Darbari' any day.
