Aarakshan
Synopsis:
Halfway through the film, there's this really random and intense scene where Saif Ali Khan is just staring at this massive pile of crumpled up application forms on a wooden desk, looking totally exhausted and dusty while wearing a slightly faded light blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and you can just tell he's thinking about how hard everything has gotten. But to understand why he looks so stressed out in that specific classroom, you have to look at how this whole Aarakshan mess started in the first place, back when Prabhakar Anand, played by Amitabh Bachchan, was running this prestigious St. Anselm college like it was his own family, believing deeply that education should be for everyone regardless of their background. Amitabh plays this noble principal who's super dedicated and strict, and he's got this loyal protégé Deepak Kumar, which is Saif's character, who came from a lower caste background and had to fight tooth and nail for every single opportunity he ever got. Deepak is dating Poorbi, played by Deepika Padukone who is Prabhakar's bright and spirited daughter, and things are pretty sweet for a bit even though society outside the campus gates is already starting to boil over with tension about job quotas and university seats. Then Prakash Jha decides to flip the script on us and bring in Manoj Bajpayee as Mithilesh Singh, this ultra-ambitious politician who used to be a student at the college and now wants to commercialize the whole education system just to line his own pockets and gain absolute power. Mithilesh isn't playing nice, and he basically uses the courts, protests, and dirty political tricks to strip Prabhakar of his principal position and turn the campus into a war zone where rich kids and poor kids are practically at eachrousing each other's throats. Prateik Babbar shows up as Sushant, this vulnerable kid caught in the middle of the chaos who just wants to study without getting beaten up by angry mobs, and he ends up dropping out because the pressure is just way too high. Right after that happens, Prabhakar gets kicked out of the very institution he built up over decades, and he's forced to pack up his books and leave with his head held high, which honestly breaks your heart because he didn't do anything wrong except try to be fair.
So then Prabhakar decides he's not just gonna sit around doing nothing, so he starts a grassroots school out in a dusty rural village with practically no resources, proving that teaching doesn't need marble floors and fancy labs. It's just a dirt yard and some chalk. Deepak tags along to help out, and they're teaching kids under trees and fixing broken roofs with their bare hands while trying to ignore the constant harassment from local goons hired by Mithilesh. The funny thing is, Deepika's character Poorbi drives all the way out there in her little hatchback just to bring them tiffin boxes and argue with Deepak about their future, because she's stuck between her dad's idealistic crusade and the reality of their wedding plans falling apart. Things get even crazier when Mithilesh actually manages to pass a massive commercialization bill that turns education into a corporate playground where only the super-wealthy can afford to become doctors or engineers, and ordinary people get priced out completely. Amitabh delivers these massive, booming monologues about equality that honestly feel right at home in the grand tradition of classic bollywood dramas, reminding everyone in the audience why he's still the ultimate heavy-hitter of hindi films. A lot of people talk about how modern bollywood movies don't tackle real socio-economic issues anymore, but this one dives right into the messiness of reservation policies and class warfare without holding back, even if it gets a bit melodramatic and preachy during the second half. Anyway, Deepak realizes he can't just run away to a village forever, and he decides to take the fight directly back to the courtroom and the government bodies, facing off against Mithilesh in a brutal legal and public relations battle that puts every single thing he's ever worked for on the line. He's sweating through his shirts, losing sleep, and getting threatened on the phone every five minutes. Total chaos.
The climax boils down to this massive educational tribunal hearing where Prabhakar takes the stand and gives this fiery speech about how merit isn't just about test scores, but about overcoming systemic disadvantages, and the judges just sit there stunned while Mithilesh squirms in his seat knowing his corrupt little scheme is finally collapsing. Outside the courthouse, a huge crowd of students and supporters are chanting slogans and waving banners in the blazing sun, and Saif's character walks out through the gates, meets Deepika's eyes in the middle of the roaring crowd, and they finally share a quiet, exhausted smile after all the nightmare drama they've been dragged through. Prabhakar walks slowly back toward his beloved campus grounds, taking off his reading glasses and wiping his brow with a handkerchief as the gates open up to let him back inside where he belongs.
Prabhakar Anand drops his tea glass on the floor in the middle of a private lecture, and the way the glass shatters with an unglamorous clatter tells you more about Prakash Jha's structural ambitions than the next three hours of policy debates will. It is a messy moment. Amitabh Bachchan doesn't wince, which feels right for a man who has spent half his career playing institutions rather than mortals, but the camera lingers on the puddle of steaming chai spreading across the linoleum a fraction too long before cutting to a wide shot of the faculty courtyard. Hindi cinema has always struggled to make administrative reform look cinematic. Jha tries to fix this by shooting every single committee meeting like a war room in *The Bourne Ultimatum*, with whip pans and handheld lenses darting between chalkboards and sweaty brows, but the sheer tonnage of dialogue about grading curves keeps dragging the pacing down into the mud.
Saif Ali Khan walks into this pedagogical pressure cooker wearing leather jackets that cost more than an assistant professor's annual salary, playing a fiery lower-caste rebel who is also somehow dating the principal's daughter. It’s a bit much. He spits out his lines about meritocracy with genuine venom, though, leaning against iron gates with a coiled posture that suggests he might actually start a riot if the director yelled action one more time. Opposite him, Manoj Bajpayee does what Manoj Bajpayee does best, which is to turn corporate villainy into an oily, magnetic art form while wearing khadi kurtas that look like they've never seen a laundry tub. When Bajpayee’s character Mithilesh Singh smiles at a press conference, it's not a smile so much as a threat wrapped in polite syntax, echoing that greasy, opportunistic energy he brought to *Gangs of Wasseypur* years later.
The screenplay by Anjum Rajabali and Prakash Jha wants to chew on the reservation system in Indian universities without choking on its own politics. Sometimes it chokes anyway. Deepika Padukone plays the principal's idealistic daughter with a kind of earnest breathlessness that works fine until she has to deliver a five-minute monologue about constitutional rights in front of a hostile mob of upper-caste students. She tries her best. The background score by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, however, does her absolutely no favors by swelling into an orchestral wail every time someone so much as picks up a piece of chalk, turning what should be a tense campus standoff into a melodramatic soap opera. There's an atrocious, auto-tuned protest anthem that repeats itself four separate times during the second act, and by the third iteration, you just want to rip the speakers out of the wall.
Behind the cameras, Sachin Krishn’s cinematography washes the dust of Bhopal in blinding glare and slate-gray shadows, leaning heavily into high-contrast filters whenever the script pivots from academic politics to violent street clashes. The editing room floor must have been knee-deep in discarded reaction shots of Prateik Babbar looking anguished. Babbar plays a Dalit student caught in the crossfire of riots and personal betrayal, and while his dialogue delivery is occasionally swallowed by sloppy dubbing, his physical agitation feels earned. He runs with his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched tight. Shabana Azmi and Tanvi Azmi pop up in supporting roles that give the movie its rare moments of domestic quiet, sitting on veranda swings and discussing the cost of lentils while the men outside scream slogans about the constitution.
The problem isn't that this film takes its politics seriously, because God knows we need more commercial Hindi movies that aren't afraid of a policy debate. The problem is that it treats every single character as a walking editorial column rather than a messy human being. When Hema Malini makes a brief, wasted appearance as the principal's estranged wife, she gets about three lines before vanishing into the narrative ether, leaving behind no impression other than that someone remembered she was available for a cameo. You watch these actors strain against the didactic dialogue, wishing someone would just drop the grand themes of social justice for five minutes and let them breathe. It's a loud, exhausting piece of work that mistakes volume for urgency, pushing its righteous message so hard that the narrative vertebrae practically snap in half.