BANDIT QUEEN
A film review by S. Ananthasubramanian
Copyright 1996 S. Ananthasubramanian
Shekar Kapoor's Bandit Queen is not an entertaining movie. It is made with the sole purpose of making us realize the atrocities done to lower caste people, especially women, in India. It is the real story of a woman who lead a group of bandits in the late seventies in India.
Peppering the scenes with foul language and without a single known actor or actress in the movie, the director manages to create realistic and brutal characters and tear your heart apart. In the end, he makes us wonder whether there is anything to be happy about being an Indian.
The movie begins with a quote from Manusmrithi(an ancient book on social values in India) that equates the women, the uneducated and the lowercaste people to cattle and justifies beating them for making them obey.
The early parts of the movie deal with Phoolan's marriage when she is a kid. Sold by her father to a man thrice her age for a cycle, a cow and Rs.100 ($3.00) the 11 year old Phoolan is beaten and sexually assaulted, which damages her personality completely. The film crew, with their artistic and candid work, take you to dry, poverty ridden villages of Madhya Pradesh ( a poor state in central India). This part ends with helpless cries from the kid that fill your ears and pain that fills your heart.
A teenage Phoolan is branded a hooker by the village when she refuses to comply to the sexual advances of a young Thakur. As the story goes on Phoolan is kidnapped by a group of gangsters whose leader takes pleasure in raping her day in and day out. Now, coming to the picturization of these rape scenes, Shekar Kapoor has taken Indian cinema to the next level.
So far rape in Indian movies has been portrayed in only two ways, either in a symbolic way or as a cheap substitute for love making scenes. Showing a painting of a tiger feasting over a deer or a flower burning in the oven with appropriate music has been enough for Indian film fans to understand the happenings on the screen. The pictures made with cheap actors and advertised with obvious posters, which have rape scenes with erotic music and obscene images to satisfy the front bencher, make up the second category.
In B.Q., as in real life, rape is painful, vulgar, repulsive and an expression of the beast inside every man. Phoolan's voice filled with pain is heard initially, and as the camera moves in, one can see the most obscene and hurting image ever shown on Indian screens. The semi-naked rapist lying over Phoolan goes on raping her violently as we remain helpless and bewildered. After Phoolan is rescued from her tormenter by the smart Vikram Mallah, another gangster, Shekar Kapoor portrays the affair that develops between these two with equal vigor. Their relationship is short lived, as everything in Phoolan's life is.
Once Vikram is killed by another gangster, Sriram, she is taken away by Sriram's gang. All the 16 members of this gang rape her one after the other. After this, she is paraded naked in the streets of Behmai as the whole village watches on. Though there is a very strong possibility for this scene to get censored in India, there is nothing cheap or vulgar about this when you see it on screen. In an industry set up where, "double-meaning" lyrics and dance movements with obvious messages are shot for the mainstream cinema, an anti-Bollywood (Bollywood - the heart of film production in India) scene like this, which does not portray woman as a sexual object, is sure to evoke flames. As Phoolan is "punished" for not behaving like a lowercaste woman the biased social set up in India looms large in our minds.
Coming out of such a nasty experience is not easy. Phoolan manages to and takes the gun in her arms. Even now, no move by the director justifies her taking the law in her hands. Most importantly, you don't see action packed scenes for clapping or whistling. The director is just a narrator and thankfully he hasn't brought in commercial elements to hinder the flow of the story. The rise and fall of Phoolan as the bandit queen and her eventual surrender are shown with equal sincerity.
Seema Biswas in the title role gives a very powerful and memorable performance that is sure to fetch her critical acclaim and numerous awards. With her ordinary looks she may not make it big in mainstream cinema, but, this is what they call, "role of a life time". She's definitely given her best and that is more than enough.
Fateh Ali Khan's (remember the voice in Oliver Stone's "Natural born Killers" ?) music adds depth and soul, thankfully not color, to the images.
A very strong heart is a must for watching this film. Accepting the negative points of our society needs a much stronger one. If our society is/was half as bad the one portrayed in this movie then there is no point in being proud about our social set up.
Reports say that this is one of the biggest box office hits of the year in India. Let's hope its an eye opener to those who breed social injustice.
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