Before O’Romeo, revisiting Vishal Bhardwaj’s Rangoon, an epic romance unfolding against the fiercest tides of violence

At its heart, Rangoon is a love triangle (a somewhat subversion of Casablanca). And like any true triangle, it thrives on irony: two romances crossing at the same wound, revealing each other by contrast. With Nawab (Shahid Kapoor), Julia (Kangana Ranaut) is seen. With Rusi (Saif Ali Khan), she is managed. Nawab sees her as a woman; Rusi calls her a “kiddo.” Nawab traces the scar on her back as if it were scripture; Rusi dismisses the same mark as something to be corrected. With Nawab, she falls into mud. With Rusi, she is rinsed in water. Nawab draws out the self she has buried and accepts it without amendment. Rusi is forever drafting a neater version, shaping her towards an identity that suits him better than it suits her. One relationship releases her. The other rehearses her. In that sense, Julia becomes the film’s soul. She is not only a woman divided between two men; she is a country divided between two futures. As India, back then did not yet know what it was becoming. As it stood between Bose’s fire and Gandhi’s restraint.

Rusi’s relationship with Julia was largely defined by control and ownership.

Julia is a character who keeps unfolding. Consider her introduction, which is staged like a musical. She plays a film star (modelled on Fearless Nadia) who is preparing to perform a risky stunt. But before she appears, her name does. The crew sings it: the cinematographer, the custom dadas, the chorus of men who build her myth. They chant her legend into existence. We are told who she is before we are allowed to see her. And when we finally do see her, it is in a mirror. Then she performs the stunt. Rusi, the producer, however, is dissatisfied. He asks for another take. This time, she hesitates. She is afraid. The significance of the mirror is heightened here. The woman we were promised is a construction. That is her image. Her commerce. In life, she is controlled, corrected, spoken for. The film, then, becomes her coming of age. Through Nawab, she encounters a form of love that for her, an awakening. So by the time we reach the climax, she performs again: a stunt more dangerous than the first. But now it is not a staged fantasy; it is a lived risk. The same song plays. The same invocation circles her. Only this time, the words feel unnecessary. She no longer needs to be described. She has become what they once had to sing.

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If Julia’s journey is one of awakening, Rusi’s is one of reckoning. He was once the star of his time. An injury ends that life, and what remains is a man who survives by serving power. He becomes a stooge of the imperialists. After all, comfort edits conscience. When Nawab tells Julia, “Are you even alive? If you were, you would have seen the tyranny of your masters, you would have heard the screams of the innocent,” the line cuts through more than one character. It is the film’s sharpest moment. It speaks to Julia, but it could just as easily indict Rusi. (What makes the line endure is that it exceeds its moment. It reaches beyond the narrative, beyond its period setting, and gestures toward the present, towards the compromises that continue to haunt the film industry). Transformation is the cornerstone of the film, and it is born not from rhetoric but from intimacy. Julia changes because she is loved without being diminished. Nawab changes because he allows himself to love something larger than himself. And Rusi, too, is granted that possibility. So, in the final frame, when Rusi chooses love over allegiance, the film brushes against something close to Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Because, like him, Bhardwaj locates revolution within romance.