Patriotism, and two movie reviews

This is hard for a good bleeding heart liberal to say, but I am a patriot. Not a pinhead-patriot like the jingoist flag-waving conservative christian dipshits that have rallied around America's Stupidest President, but a Patriot more along the lines of Earl Warren (Chief Justice of the supreme court in the 60's and before) who understood that his DUTY as a powerful American was not to lie subservient to the past, but to see the shortcomings of our country and try to address them.

We are not perfect. We engaged in genocide against the natives, war crimes against the Vietnamese and the Iraqis (and probably the germans (dresden) and the japanese (too many to name, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki cover it) and mass oppression against the Africans, Chinese and others that we brought here to build our country, willingly or otherwise.

How can a patriot say such things? Because they are true, and to refuse to say them is, well, intentional idiocy. MY Patriotism is not mutually exclusive with honesty.

What am I a patriot about? The rule of law, political, religious and expressive freedom, and a free press. We have none of these things, but we are closer to them than any other country. But we ceaselessly try to be as close to those ideals as we can.

I saw two movies recently that really exemplify what I mean when I say Patriotism. they are:
"Swades", and "Chak De India". Obviously, they are not American movies.

"Swades" (rooughly translated as "homeland") is the story of an American resident Indian engineer who works for Nasa. He retuns home to bring the woman who raised him (nanny, foster-mother) to the U.S. so that she can have a comfortable old age. In the course of his travels, he falls in love with India, and the small villiage in which she lives, and, of course, a woman. This film is about the beauty and majesty of India, but it is also relentlessy critical of Indian culture, especially the caste system. Mohan (the engineer) confronts the villiage elders with their own hypocracy in several well-written and superbly acted dialogues and monologues. I will not go further into detail because I hope I can convince somebody to watch the thing.

Also in Swades is a musical scene (this is a Bolleywood movie, there is ALWAYS a musical scene) that is very descriptive of the Animist philosophy, and is very beautiful.

Shah Rukh Khan stars, and I can give no higher praise than this: he emotes so well that I ocassionally let the subtitles flow by just to watch the performance, not really caring about the words. 'course, I downloaded the movie, so I can watch it several times. My son CrowBear asks for me to play the songs repeatedly.

The second movie, also starring Shah Ruhk Khan, is "Chak De India" ("Come On India") and is a -- wait for it-- Women's Field Hockey movie. It is a fairly standard sports flick, with training montages and motivational songs (really good ones. Bolleywood kicks everybodies ass at musical scores). This is a lighter, less meaningful movie than Swades, but it is great fun, where Swades is sometimes brooding. It has a men-versus-women riot in a MacDonalds that is quite enjoyable, and a lot of the Field Hockey action is well planned and VERY well filmed. This movie is also very critical of Indian mores and culture, in the way women are treated, and in the way India is fragmented into many different and frequently fractious states. The girls (I was never able to really tell how old these women were, and the film itself refers to them as both girls and women) are presented as strong, independent and intelligent, and some are presented as noble, some as manipulative, some as jealous, some as megalomaniacal, but all of them real characters.
Khan is generous with screen time, surprising in a bolleywood megastar.

Both of these films are works (in 'swades' case, masterworks) of patriotism in the sense that I use it: these films are, in the course of loving India, trying to fix it.

I wish these were American films, because they express a sentiment I find very lacking in our cinema.

I have had a long obsession with Bolleywood films, but these are the first two I am not embarassed to like.