The Oscar success of Slumdog Millionaire--IMHO, a manipulative phony British exploitation film about boarding school sadism pretending to be Indian--reminded me to write about Satayajit Ray's 1977 classic, The Chess Players (Shatranj Ke Khilari). It is a parable of British Imperialism and Indian weakness in the year before the Siege of Lucknow became the Mutiny that drove the British East India Company out. Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey co-star as two chess-playing Indian notables, Mir and Mirza, who try to escape from reality through a game of strategy. Meanwhile, the British East India Company man, played by Richard Attenborough (director of Ghandi), plots a regime change in Lucknow--overthrowing a loyal but ineffectual king, Wazid Ali Shah, apparently just because he could. The film is set in the year is 1856. Indian viewers would have known that on July 11th, 1857, the Indian sepoys at Lucknow mutineed, turning on the British. The chess game went on, and on, and goes on still today...
For a genuine Indian film, it's The Chess Players over Slumdog every time....