Many people, western and Indian, complain that Indian films don't offer anything different, that they aren't grown up enough, but when great films like swades get made and released they either lambasted or ignored. Swades is the kind of film which brings hope to bollywood. As someone who was an ardent supporter of bollywood i have found that since 2001 the quality of films have generally been poor, and my attention turned towards south India, where you get to see truly great films.

As for the film, it has a novel storyline, which incidentally is based on a true story. Shah Rukh Khan gives a brilliant performance, he becomes his character and it is a welcome change from the screen persona that he has had in so many countless over-rated films. The background music to film adds a real dimension to the film, a lesser musician could have easily made the scenes melodramatic with a poor background score.

What prevents Swades from being a truly magnificent film, and in my eyes prevents it from being as good as films like Kannathil Muthamittal and Lagaan, is that the film suffers from an average cinematography and from average editing. With all due respect to Mahesh Aney, he not in the same league as Anil Mehta or Ravi Chandran or Santosh Sivan, you never felt in awe of a scene. The editing I felt was poor, but I believe this was due to a script which turned out to be more than four hours long, and a great deal was done to cut the running time to something respectable but in doing so the importance of certain scenes got diluted, for example when Mohan goes to meet the farmer, his journey there is turned in to a montage for a song, and the impact of the final song in the film is diluted when the song is interrupted with other important scenes.

Swades is a great film and also a great message, and it is a shame that certain reviewers didn't see that. Thankfully the Indian public eventually saw the film and got to see the message the director wanted convey.