‘3 Idiots’ or — Engineering Dissent?
‘3 Idiots’ (2009) concerns three students — Frahan, Raju and Rancho — who all attend an engineering college in Delhi. The college is run in a highly competitive manner, something which exerts huge pressure on the students. When a student is found hanging in his ceil after failing a class the free-spirited and independent Rancho believes it is the school and the system that is to blame and lays the student’s death at the feet of college director, a director known as Virus and who is a man so competitive he writes with both hands simultaneously.
And so we follow, both forward and backward in time, these three idiots as they attempt to balance family responsibility, academic competition, poverty, romance, the class system, integrity, personal fulfillment as well as radically reinventing the entire Indian education system so it is less destructive on students’ mental health. It’s a very ambitious film dealing with heavyweight issues, but it’s also a comedy and a very funny one at that. Indeed it’s often inadvertently funny, which just makes it even more gutbustingly hilarious.
The potential downside is, as with many Bollywood films (which tend to cater to every generation of entire Indian families), cramming so many disparate elements together results in some truly jarring emotional clashes; one minute we’re meant to be laughing away, the next we’ve cut to a shot of death and tragedy.
For example, there’s one scene when a student, after a suicide attempt, is in a coma and it’s not looking good for the guy as his friends desperately attempt to revive him. So why the hell was I laughing so hard that I had tears running down my face?!
Likewise there’s a scene where a vacuum cleaner is transformed into a ventouse by the students to help deliver a baby during a traumatic childbirth. It is tense and emotional, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t laughing my ass off during every second of it.
This means that although ‘3 Idiots’ is long (almost 3 hours) it’s never boring. In fact, for a 3 hour long comedy it has very little fat on it, is nicely balanced and never dull. The story is strong and clear, the characters well rounded with distinct personalities and when the emotional beats do hit I have to admit that I teared-up several times during this movie. ‘3 Idiots’ is incredibly sweet!
For a Bollywood movie ‘3 Idiots’ doesn’t contain too many songs, possibly because the film would be even longer than it is, but the ones it does have in it are a blast including a visually striking romantic number that I, personally, felt was better than anything in ‘La La land’ (2016) plus a fantastic number in a boys shower.
I adored ‘3 Idiots’ WAY more than I was expecting. It’s crammed with likeable and eccentric characters and even the unlikable ones are provided with a true sense of humanity. It is scathing about social issues but never nasty or condescending. This is a movie with its heart, and it is a BIG heart, in exactly the right place. The film also, apparently, achieved its ambition in enacting change in the Indian educational system, which is something pretty special.
If you’ve never seen a Bollywood movie before then I can’t imagine a better place to start.
