Sairat: Love in the time of family honour

Nagaj Manjule, the celebrated directed of the cult Marathi film Fandry has come out with yet another compelling tale in Sairat. The film is very important for our times, especially where caste and creed take priority over blood relations; where humanity is sacrificed on the altar of so called family honour and pride.

Director: Nagraj Manjule

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The film is a suave narration of love story between a boy (Parshya) from a poor family and a girl (Archi) from the upper echelons. As expected, it is a love tale that cannot be! And hence all the drama has to unfold. As the narrative proceeds, though, there seems to be a semblance of normalcy appearing, and yet what seems to win at the end is the tragic ‘family honour’.

The whole film is a realistic scripting of what seems to happen in many parts of Indian conservative societies. It is not making undue overt statements either. The characters in the film are the next door neighbours going about their daily routine. However, things take a serious turn when what seems normal is ‘shattered’ by the unusual love tale.

This is indeed an important film for our time – a time which has developed so much scientifically and technologically and yet backward in its reasoning and attitudes to life. Not just for the narrative it unfolds, but for the boldness it exhibits in presenting the day to day events in all its beauty and rawness. In fact, this film has the potential to both entertain and shock, placing before us the limitless passions – both positive and negative – at work among humans. The young new actors – deserve plaudits for the life they have added to the narrative.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Dhag: The fire all around!

Here is yet another important film in Marathi that deals with a unique subject. The film won several national awards last year, including the best actress award for Usha Jadhav. The film deals with a caste related practice. Here is a family whose family trade is cremating the dead in the village. Ironically, it is in the death of someone that the family must find its living.

 

Director: Shivaji Lotan Patil

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The problem becomes acute when in a sudden turn of events, the man in the family dies of snake bite and the young son has problems continuing with this practice. Though the son wants to study and become someone in life as per his father’s wish, he realises how the eventuality has brought in several other problems to the family, including the lustful advances of men towards his mother. It is in this context that the son must make a decision of his life.

The young Hansraj Jagtap as Krishna adds life to a film which in parts turns melodramatic. The suffering that a caste related trade brings to a poor family can be seen and felt through the tender yet mature expressions of this young boy. The blaze (dhag) is not just that which emanates from the pyre, it is there even in his eyes. The film, of course, does not end pessimistically, which is its strength. There is hope even when the fire blazes all around you.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Mala Aai Vyichya: The problem of surrogacy!

Surrogacy is not something uncommon these days. In fact, many women from Western countries come to third world countries seeking for surrogate mothers. India is quite a haven of surrogate mothers, according to some reports. The issue, however, has not been a theme of many films. But, Marathi film Mala Aai Vyichya addresses it quite effortlessly, although with an extra dose of melodrama.

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Director: Samruddhi Porey

The film gets to the issue straightaway. Here is a couple from abroad that employs Yashoda to be the surrogate mother. Yashoda, a single mother, agrees to earn some money to get her daughter’s leg operation done. But, things take a dramatic turn when the medical reports suggest that the surrogate child may be born with deformity. It is here that the foreign couple deserts Yashoda to fend for herself and the new-born. The destiny, though, wills otherwise. The child is born normal and Yashoda gets emotionally attached to the child. After many years, the couple comes back seeking for the child.

The film raises several issues, but evades the most important one – the ethical. When a child born of a surrogate mother, whose child is it anyway? The law is very clear: that the surrogate mother is just a facilitator and not the real mother. But, what if the surrogate mother develops an emotional bonding with the child in the womb? Bearing a child is not merely a physical activity; the whole person, with her feelings and emotions is involved in it. All the same, the film succeeds in raising many questions, even as it answers a few of them. Full marks to Urmila Kanitkar, the surrogate mother.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Fandry: Chasing elusive birds!

Marathi film Fandry which has won many awards, is a typical film that deals with the caste question and the struggle for survival of dalits in an Indian village. This is perhaps one of those very few films that have brought out the raw reality of the subaltern powerfully. The subaltern narrative that is in focus in this film is the brutality of caste system which in this modern world plays out more subtly than the historic untouchability. Here is a family, the day-to-day struggles of which are a spectacle of entertainment for the so called upper caste people in the village. The entire narrative is depicted through the eyes of the teenage son in the family Jabya. The irony is that this boy is chasing two ‘birds’ both of which are elusive to him – one a long-tailed sparrow and the other a fair girl from the upper caste.  

Director: Nagraj Manjule

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The caste dynamics at play in this film are similar to the dynamics playing in any village today. Caste today is not just about untouchability; for untouchability in its true sense is no more a major concern, when you can easily stay away with people whom you don’t like. It is about attitudes and perceptions. In the film, the family of Kachrya, the father of Jabya the ‘lover boy’, lives as usual on the fringe of the village; but the family is sought after to tidy the dirt of the village, i.e. to catch the pigs which are another symbol of defilement. Perhaps, the family can be banished only when all the dirt (pigs) are done away from the village. 

The final scene in the film where the young Jabya gives vent to his suppressed anger seems just an aberration in a scenario where dalits are considered a mass to be merely used and suppressed, and the discrimination and humiliation meted out to them considered something normal. It is a landmark film that brings to forth the dalit angst. 

-Melwyn Pinto SJ

Gabhricha Paus: Ode to the allusive rain that kills!

According to National Crime Record Bureau statistics, 2,70,940 farmers committed suicide in India between 1995 and 2011. In the state of Maharashtra alone this number was 53,818. One can imagine the plight of farmers who are driven to such extreme steps by the compounding issues of anti-farmer farm policies of the governments and the vagaries of nature. Several directors have touched upon this issue in their films in the Marathi film. Gabhricha Paus (The damned rain) is one such significant attempt by director Satish Manwar.

Director: Satish Manwar

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In the background of a series of farmers committing suicide due to varied circumstances, Alka (Sonali Kulkarni) takes upon herself to protect her husband Kisna (Girish Kulkarni) at any cost. She does not allow him to get into depression, nor does she allow him to be alone and aloof. She makes sure that her little son accompanies the father like a faithful dog everywhere to the great displeasure of Kisna.

The film does portray the angst of a farming family, which is in such a painful dilemma like never before: they cannot think anything other than farming; and yet it is this farming that has failed them finally. It is not that there are no solutions to this rural crisis. It is just that distressed farmers seem to be a non-entity to powers that be.

The versatile Sonali Kulkarni comes alive very natural as the anxious wife of a defeated farmer. Here is a film that helps you grasp the complexities a farming community has to address, even as it fights hard to stay alive!

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Shala: Going back to school

Once again here is a gem from Marathi. Shala (School), a 2011 film takes you back to school and makes you feel nostalgic, especially if you have had a humble schooling. Set in 1970s India, the film portrays myriad Indian socio-cultural complexities through the eyes of a bunch of students.

Mukund Joshi is a ninth standard boy who ‘falls in love’ with his classmate Shirodkar. He is so mad after her that even as he is good in studies, he registers himself for tuitions just to be with his girl. One might think this is absurd, and the whole aspect of love affairs in the high school not convincing. However, the director Sujay Dahake has weaved a compelling story of love with hardly any grand romanticism and glamour that is intrinsic to an adult love. Here is a young boy who is so passionate about a girl and his love for her is pure and precious. Hence it does not seem unwieldy and artificial at all.

Director: Sujay Dahake

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The film is also about the Indian struggle to keep pace with democratic principles. In 1975 Indira Gandhi declared Emergency and that brought about tremendous upheaval in the socio-economic and cultural spheres of India. It affected education as well. The director tries a bit to depict this part of our history through the eyes of the protagonists.

The school that is portrayed in the film, of course, is a typical idea of an Indian grand narrative called ‘School’. It has all sort of characters (call them teachers). There are those who are so full of ego and think that only brown wrapper is the best for the note books. There are others who have their own idiosyncrasies that keep them low; while there are also a few who are more sympathetic to the students.

While the film is hardly a mirror to what schooling must have been in medieval India, it, no doubt, gives a glimpse into its influence in society. And, well, the love story of two village teens has all the characteristics of a fairy tale in a real world. 

- Melwyn Pinto SJ