BANDIT QUEEN
A film review by M. Srikanth
Copyright 1995 M. Srikanth
Starring: Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi, the bandit queen. Directed by: Shekar Kapur Written by: Mala Sen Music: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Photography: Ashok Mehta
Overview:
BANDIT QUEEN is the real life story of India's Phoolan Devi, a low-caste woman who rose to become one of the most feared dacoits of her time. In a sense, it is also a chapter from the real life story of India today. In another sense, it is also a chapter from the real life story of world's women.
Here is no stylised narration of truth; this is real life viewed under the glaring arc-lights of brutal honesty. The director was walking a very thin line--one false step and this would turn into a sleazy, irreverent portrayal and would betray all good intentions. The viewer is taken through an emotional roller-coaster ride--I felt hatred, extreme anger, embarrassing helplessness, enormous pity and at last, a sense of guilt-ridden relief when it was all over. If such a movie can only be judged by the effect it has on its viewers, BANDIT QUEEN is a huge success.
The controversies:
This movie, completed a year ago, has been embroiled in controversy from multiple fronts. Initially, Phoolan Devi strongly opposed the screening of the movie saying that it was a warped account of her life. However, as Shekar Kapur (the director of the movie who was present during the screening) explained, she had not even seen the movie then and was going entirely by hearsay. Recently, however, she has been shown the movie in private screenings (the movie is still banned in India) and she has both "approved it for worldwide release" and withdrawn her case from court. After watching the movie, the only comment she had was "My life was much harder."
>From another front, Shekar has also been fighting to get the censor board of India to clear the movie. This is unlike any Indian movie ever made--graphic violence, explicit language and even a scene with full frontal nudity. But again, this is reality and if people can see it in the streets, why can't they see it on the screen? Shekar has vowed to fight the censors "tooth and nail" and is confident that the movie "will be screened without any cuts in the near future."
Is Shekar commercialising India's current moral depravity? Given the thoroughly deglamourised, non-dramatic portrayal of potentially cinematic contexts, the answer would have to be a no. "Are you saying this is India?" asked a viewer after the movie. "No," Shekar said emphatically, "I don't think I ever did." How did he feel as an Indian filming this shameful side of his country? "I feel ashamed about how things are ... I think we (Indians) all need to. But I think any other director from any other part of the world--be it from Yugoslavia or Russia or South America would do the same thing as I did. We are mature enough to face reality. Aren't we?"
The movie:
From the outside, it seems an improbable task--Shekar Kapur is a high-caste, city-bred man trying to portray the life of Phoolan Devi, a low caste woman from a village. However, the fact that, at the end, this positioning vis-a-vis the artist and his subject only serves to accentuate the merits of the films's artistic achievement, is a statement on the sincerity and involvement of the artist in his endeavour.
The film opens in the year 1968 when as a 11 year old girl, Phoolan is sold away by her father as a bride to a heartless man whose sole concern is that he "needs his wife since his mother is getting too old to do the house work." We are introduced to a girl who freely uses foulest of languages and who has a game confidence that she can take on any of these "sister *******." In her new environment, she is confronted with the caste discriminations of the local high caste Thakurs whom she would live to hate for the rest of her life. Here is also the first of the countless times she would be violated. This first act of violation was a powerful piece of work, with the camera initially showing both the husband and the scared girl, then slowly moving to close-in on the girl's tormented face, while in the background one can hear the screamings grow shriller and shriller till the moment when it mixes with a voice that is singing a high-pitched lament. Genuinely gut-wrenching.
The initial fifteen minutes of the movie, in which all this happens, sets the tone and the pattern for the remaining 105 minutes. We see the turbulent, often traumatic life of Phoolan Devi with little left to imagination. She runs away from her husband after the incident, is driven out of her native village for having "enticed" a higher caste youth, lives with her cousin for a while till the time that Vikram, a low caste bandit, falls in love with her and rescues her from his high-caste fellow bandit. There is a brief relief for Phoolan (and the audience) as she adjusts herself to the new life as a bandit, her new image and the prominence. However, things get rough again with the release of the high caste ex-leader of the gang from prison. How this changes her life irrevocably and how she rises again from the ashes to become the bandit queen is the rest of the movie.
There are several sequences in the movie where the art of portrayal of reality has been taken to new heights. I will not go into all the details and let you experience it first hand, but it would suffice to say that much of the movie is not for the faint-hearted.
While handling a story such as this, the role of the director of a movie changes dramatically. He is more of an interpreter; constantly making choices of what to show and what to leave out, there is an abundance of material, and constantly "coalescing" truth into understandable unifications and using them as vehicles to convey a sense of the reality. An overwhelming priority is also his role as a watchdog to protect the film from veering into the dimension of celluloid entertainment, while all the time maintaining an eye on both the sincerity of his own intentions and the authenticity of his interpretations. Thankfully, Shekar has scored well in all departments relieving us from having to digress into pedantic details.
Seema Biswas is Phoolan Devi. It is difficult to believe that this is her first movie. The hatred and anger in the eyes are real, the confidence in her manner in the latter part of the movie is real and on the whole a near faultless performance. Only during the scenes when she tries to portray the feminine side of Phoolan can one sense a measure of discomfort as if she is not wholly sure of what to do. However, on second thought, there might be some truth in saying that Phoolan herself, after all the trauma she has gone through, had lost touch with her feminine side and as such the hesitation on Seema's part was deliberate. Also, one has to admire and appreciate the courage of an Indian artist to come forward to be cast in such a portrayal.
The screenplay is mostly tight. The first half of the movie moves very fast and so do the final segments. The middle portion, showing the life of Vikram and Phoolan as bandits seems a little sagging, though. Towards the end, the attempts by the government to get Phoolan to surrender are shown in a hurried detail. Also, we get no real understanding of how Phoolan was perceived by the general public outside the valleys of Chambal. What we get is a tight close-up on Phoolan the person and her social position as a bandit queen is almost considered an irrelevance (Shekar did mention after the movie that he had to make many difficult choices and that he was contractually obligated to make a two hour movie).
The music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the photography by Ashok Mehta lend able support.
From a totally different view point, this is a positive film about resurgence. The fact that a physically traumatised, mentally tormented, low-caste woman from a depraved Indian village chose not to give up but stand up and fight her own battle is amazing. This movie stands as fair testimony to this life of resurgence.
Needless to say, I highly recommend the movie.
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