Mr. Movie review: ‘Swades’ a beautiful, but extremely long, story of loss

Swades casts Shah Rukh Khan as Mohan. He’s an Indian immigrant working for NASA and is a critical cog in a soon to launch satellite to monitor deteriorating water conditions worldwide. He’s also a man conflicted. When his parents immigrated to the U.S., they left his nanny Kaveri behind. Mohan’s parents are dead and his mind is on Kaveri, and he wants to take care of her.

So Mohan takes a leave of absence and returns to India and to a small village where Kaveri now resides. There he meets the beautiful Gita, a school teacher who wants to improve the education of the kids in the area.

His return leads to more conflicts. Mohan falls in love with the people and with Gita, and begins to be involved in their lives. It leads to a should-I-stay-or-should-I-go soap opera.

To his credit, director Ashutosh Gowariker’s movie is beautiful and you’ll fall in love with the characters. And I liked the movie. But no movie should run 3:09. At times the length alone makes what could have been a really terrific movie tedious. I was fortunate to have the video and was able to watch it over a couple of days. You won’t have that luxury.

Showtime is 7:30 p.m. at the Battelle Auditorium on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory campus in Richland.

Cost is $4 for adults and $2 for kids. A series ticket is $16.

For more information, go to tricityfilmclub.org.

This story was originally published December 1, 2016 at 8:56 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: ‘Swades’ a beautiful, but extremely long, story of loss."