Disclaimer: This review is only for the initiated, those who have seen ‘Joker’ and have walked out of the movie theatre stunned into silence. It has a lot of spoilers, so do read at your own risk. The author claims no responsibility if any cinematic viewer’s movie-going experience is ruined. Consider yourself adequately warned.

There has been a lot of hype, a lot of discussion and a lot of mystique surrounding the release of the recent movie that has taken the world by storm – ‘Joker’. It claims to be an independent film and is a different iteration of the character as opposed to the Joker played by the brilliant Heath Ledger in ‘The Dark Knight’.

The first soundtrack that stands out in the movie is the Baroque, which plays in the background when Arthur is bounding along the streets of Gotham with a signboard in his hand. It is a lilting form of classical music, setting an atmosphere of cheer and carefreeness. Then Arthur’s head is bashed in with the same signboard and the title flashes on the screen. This reflects the mood of the entire movie – every time you think there is hope, you are made to think again.

The rest of the movie is predominantly carried by heavy cello music, conveying depth, despair and a strain of melancholy. It adds a layer of depression to all that’s happening on the screen. The shots of Arthur’s face are mostly close-ups, with Phoenix’s face covering almost two-thirds of the screen. The shots in the subway, his house, in the washrooms, in the hospital and most other places are mostly narrow and focus on two or three characters in the screen at a time. This forces the viewers to acknowledge Arthur’s closed-off, solitary, almost claustrophobic world. It reinforces the fact that he is alone and prefers to be so, after facing betrayal from Randall, abandonment from his psychiatrist, belittlement from his co-workers, violence from his co-passengers and most importantly, a constant storm inside his own head.

In a way, Arthur’s character development is reflective of the way Gotham has become and shows the need for the repeated use of the phrase ‘clean up the streets of Gotham’ in ‘The Dark Knight’. In the other Batman instalments, we are shown only specific problems that plague Gotham from time to time – a rise in crime due to particular villains in that period (Falcone, Scarecrow, Ra’s, Joker, Two-Face, and Bane). On the other hand, ‘Joker’ serves as a glimpse into the ordinary, into the daily lives of Gotham’s residents: the casual sexual harassment that happens in the tube, the state that does not care enough for the welfare of its mentally ill patients, the strangers on the street who delight in causing trouble, the general indifference that balls up into the movement that is supposedly spurred on by Arthur. It shows the gradual descent into chaos, the gradual disintegration of a city that blazes with all the injustice that it has faced.

A reviewer of ‘Joker’ commented that Arthur is whatever the clown movement needed him to be. The first three murders that he committed were partly in self-defense and then turned into an aggravated way of standing up to those who taunted him for his affliction. However, since the three men that he murdered were working for Wayne Industries were seen as symbolising the bourgeoisie, for the public, the murderer became a status symbol, the spark that initiated the proletarian revolution. Arthur himself is surprised to see the support that his actions had amongst the general public, who were waiting for a reason to initiate chaos and target the rich. There is a public demonstration with people dressing up as clowns, as Arthur was in the getup of a clown when he murdered the three men. However, for Arthur himself, the clown isn’t a political symbol, as he says so on the Murray Franklin show. It is just who he is and who he aspires to be – a comedian. The narrative around comedy and humour has important implications throughout the movie.

Arthur has a different sense of humour. ‘Comedy is subjective’, he tells his psychiatric at the Arkham Asylum. Throughout his life, he’s had a supposed affliction where he uncontrollably laughs at random times. The acting is just fantastic – Phoenix is laughing, but he is one second away from breaking down. His eyes reflect such sorrow that his laughter becomes a metaphor for what mental illness patients go through – they seem to be something, but are really going through something else. The mental illness aspect of Joker is also handled beautifully. Arthur takes meds which are prescribed to him by a state-appointed psychiatrist. He is mandated to check in with her periodically and at one meeting tells her, ‘I just want to be happy, give me medicines for that’. His medicines seem to be for controlling his mental illness, which is briefly indicated by a mention of him having been locked up earlier in the Arkham Asylum. However, once the State decides to shut down its welfare programmes, Arthur is deprived of his medicines. Unmedicated, he becomes more responsive to the injustice around him. The calm and purposive murders of his mother and of Randall indicate that he has fixed targets in mind. The scene where he kisses Gary on the forehead, claiming that he was the only one who had ever been nice to him, shows that Arthur is not a mindless criminal and indeed has reasons for all the killings, following the ones on the tube.

Therefore, his descent into ‘crazy’ is actually not a descent at all. It is not that the withdrawal symptoms from medicines that controlled his mental illness lead to him becoming a criminal and murdering people. In fact, the unmedicated Arthur seems to be more at peace and the violence that he indulges in seems to be a truer representation of what actually gives him closure. He is finally able to act on all those who picked on him and who made his life miserable. It makes us wonder if people with mental illnesses are actually controlled so as to put themselves at peace or put us, the public, at peace that we have some control over them.

It is the same, calculated planning that leads him to Murray Franklin and the subsequent unfolding of events there. He has a target and he fulfils his goal. Neither did he turn to violent rampage, nor did he seek a tussle with the police. This shows that Arthur is definitely not the unleashed criminal mind that is the Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’. My theory is that the clown movement that Arthur unknowingly initiated, served as a fertile ground for breeding criminals who drew from the energy of the clown movement. The Joker played by Heath Ledger is different and could possibly have taken birth following the clown movement. When the director of ‘Joker’ was asked if he ever envisioned Arthur and Batman meeting, he said those two worlds would never merge, which serves to show that Arthur is definitely pre-dated and quite possibly not the Joker that is a glorified lunatic in ‘The Dark Knight’.

The clown movement in itself is not representative of Arthur’s criminal conduct at all. In fact, Arthur’s careful planning and execution, if turned into a movement, would be more representative of the way the French Revolution was depicted in ‘Do you hear the people sing?’ from Les Miserables. The clown movement is more unexpected, unorganized and passionate, just like Heath Ledger’s Joker. This is the link that ties ‘Joker’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ and shows how in the most subtle of ways, an independent film can be linked to the series that inspired it.

When there is such stability given to Arthur’s character, it is also limiting because it puts him into a box, by giving him a backstory and giving him a reason to kill, rather than passion. This is why I found the last murder, at the Arkham Asylum, rather out of place. It was certainly an interesting ending, as it truly signified that his life had turned from a tragedy into a comedy. The last scene where he is chased, with the background music resembling that of Tom and Jerry and the flashing of ‘The End’ in the same font as is portrayed in the Tom and Jerry cartoon, is again indicative of the joke that is his life. In some ways, it is also something deeper. The way that his entire love track was delusional gives scope for the viewers to challenge everything that they have seen. What else was a figment of his imagination? How much of his story is true? Was his mother also delusional or is he really Bruce’s half-brother? When he chuckles in the last scene, what is the joke? Well, as Arthur says in the end, I guess we would never get it.

Quirk would like to give a shoutout to our all-time fave movie reviewer Megha Mehta (Batch of 2019). A much revered critic in the movie circles, Megha’s trademark reviewing style of quirky social commentary interspersed with observations on certain actors being snaacccs set her apart from all other reviewers in the field. The law-schoolization of her movie reviews initiated spirited conversation and much laughter at dinner tables. Her pieces were read regardless of whether the movie had been watched or even heard of – they were read solely for the review and not for the movie itself! Megha, you continue to inspire generations of aspiring movie reviewers and we hope that you successfully journey through the wayward trenches of the movie world, adding intellectual depth and throwing shade at all the movies yet to come. 

]]> http://www.nlsquirks.in/reigniting-the-laughter-why-phoenixs-joker-is-amazing/feed/ 0 http://www.nlsquirks.in/the-queen-of-our-hearts/ http://www.nlsquirks.in/the-queen-of-our-hearts/#respond Fri, 11 Jan 2019 15:21:35 +0000 http://www.nlsquirks.in/?p=2445 Continue readingThe Queen of Our Hearts]]> Our guest reviewer, Medusa (kyunki sab saanp hai) analyzes Padmaavat through a queer lens for our fortnightly movie review column. 

So you’ve watched Padmavat and read Megha’s excellent review of the movie on Quirk. You found the movie mildly interesting and the songs hummable (Thank the classical Raagas that the songs are based on). You also found the entire Karni Sena nuisance pointless and noticed the blatant communalisation of history that the movie partakes in. But did you read the movie from a queer eye? Didn’t think so. You probably wondered why Shahid Kapoor walks around like he’s got a stick up his behind throughout the movie. Well, let’s get some things clear first hand. Pure Straight is boring, I mean, really sucky, and slow-dying boring. Look at Shahid Kapoor’s poor face through the movie anyway, all his stuck up ass can do is stare blankly and make stupid comments about how great his caste lineage is. He, of course, being a specimen of such royal blood, is not bound by monogamy, and of course everything in the movie is started by his immature Raani-Sa, churlishly asking for pearls from Sri Lanka (very conveniently Sita-like asking for the golden deer), but blaming women is not new at all, and this post is not about that. However, you can see without much insight that Raja-Sa’s love life or sex life wouldn’t be quite the stuff of dreams, at best one ten minute affair once the moon has waxed to Ekadashi in a month types. Lol. Deepika Padukone aka Raani Padmini-Sa is sexy and over the top, yes, as you would expect a Sanjay Leela Bhansali heroine to be, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why she would ever fall for our Raja-Sa and eternal Rajput glory dialogues when you have the beaches of Sri Lanka at your disposal forever.

Enter Khilji into the picture and the man is a philandering monster. Unabashedly so. Getting married? No problem, you can still get a quickie literally ten feet away from the wedding party. He’s maniacal, apparently, someone you can never expect things like respect, consistency, or basic fidelity from. You’d be a fool to expect it in any case, and it seems his newly wed wife knows better than to do that. And the acting is over the top as well. There is nothing left to the imagination. You’ve better chances of finding subtlety in your caramel popcorn than in this movie. Khilji is clearly crack, he doesn’t give a shit and he’ll be raping women and conspiring murder at the same time. All this is given to us, we are to take it and marvel at it and maybe feel repulsed and intrigued at the same time. He’s a car crash in slow motion and no you can’t look away. And girl, is he going to take everyone down with him or what!

In this rather drab and pre-set game, we are given some colour (and talent, cough) by the dreamboat that is Jim Saarbh. I have seen the scene of his entry into the movie multiple times for obvious, and not so noble reasons (and you should too). But Sarbh remains on the fringes of the story in this megalomaniac contestation represented as the fight between two civilisations. Not to mention that historically, Malik Kafur (played by Sarbh), was a capable military general, administrator, and badass royal court manipulator, he doesn’t get too much screen time here. But here is the point that I’m trying to get to, sorry Pamela Samuelson, but this ain’t no legal writing. Sarbh in the movie is the slave whore, albeit a really expensive one, and fit only for Khilji. Khilji himself is ecstatic to have him, he surveys him with interest, and tests his assassination capabilities immediately. Along with Khilji’s general sexual behaviour given to be less than faithful, what we are also given is the absolute faithfulness of Kafur. He takes to his master like fish to water and becomes “his” from the word go. The Emperor’s wish is his code of conduct, and the last rule in the book of Kafur’s morality is what would help Khilji’s philandering butt.

A large part of growing up gay is to realise that you don’t fit in many things you seem to be surrounded by. Your desires are not represented in mainstream art or culture. Heterosexuality is shoved down your throat every step of the way, and if I see another loser-Chomu Manyavar or LIC Jeevan Beema happy-responsible-boring family ad when I should be given interesting trailers instead, I am going to throttle the person next to me. So we look for hints and make up our stories, we read between the lines and try to imagine an alternative story to the one we’re being shown, and sometimes that becomes an entire act of creativity and beauty. All it needs is a flick of an eye between two male leads, a double-meaning sentence, or, well you get the drift. And yes, we would like to see more stories celebrating queer love, (not you, Dostana) and this is where Padmavat gives you that potential.

But I watched the movie with dismay to see this potential of what could have been being squandered away on the splendid sets. What is happening between Kafur and Khilji is multifaceted, maybe even in a way desirable, but we don’t really get to see that. We see an androgynous Sarbh, clearly the “female” to the straight eye, at the service of the masculine and I-actually-like-women Khilji. There is little nuance to the relationship they enjoyed, though historically, this may have been inaccurate as well. Kafur is meant for khidmat, and that is what he does. He does it with devotion and fidelity, bordering on what is expected of a wife in a traditional Indian setting.

Shall we see what Kafur gets in return? We see zero emotion from Khilji towards Kafur in the movie. We see little physical intimacy as well, but that is not difficult to imagine, hat-tip to the Censor Board for stealing whatever little joy we could have otherwise got for a nanosecond. Khilji does not invest emotionally at all into Kafur. We see him pushing Kafur away in Binte Dil, that erotic song where everyone is feeling horny. Kafur takes all of this in his stride and keeps singing and drawing the curtains over the bed, does not complain, how can he (!), and remains devoted, and clearly in servitude despite being discarded. This toxic relationship is not of his choosing, but one he gets into it, there is no looking back. Kafur here is clearly the gay one. Khilji is ambiguous. Can he be called bisexual? Is he only MSM? How do we categorise him? Khilji is also married, whereas that’s nowhere on the spectrum for Kafur. Khilji clearly desires a particular female in marriage, whereas the only one Kafur desires is him. He is the meant to be taken for granted by Khilji, somebody he can return to when he’s not feeling well or generally has nowhere else to go.

To the gay eye, this evokes a painful truism of our lives. We’ve negotiated this space with heartbreak and psychological damage. We’ve fallen for that “straight” guy who loved being with us and the sex, but would always remain straight on the outside, always in love with a person of the opposite sex, always planning to get eventually married and settle down (puke). The trope is familiar, the gay one falls in love with the straight one, they have discreet and hot sex whenever the straight one feels like it. Anything else is rebuffed and the relationship is never publicly acknowledged. That’s part of the deal. Basic decency is not given to the gay guy and often the straight one feels disgusted after sex and they never talk about it. He also treats the gay one as a valid target for homophobic jokes in front of his other straight friends. To watch this treatment in Padmavat is painful. It is painful also because the director had the option of portraying a complex and nuanced relationship between Khilji and Kafur but chose instead into making Khilji a dick and Kafur a self flagellating slave. There would be no damage to the plot of the movie had this relationship been more than just a fuck and forget, but still we don’t see that. In fact, history itself suggests otherwise, it shows that Kafur was Khilji’s general, administrator and nobleman, and not just a sex toy pastime. Nothing would be lost if Kafur was shown to be in an emotionally complex relationship, in the circumstances, but who cares about his happiness at all? Not this director and not this movie. We’ll just have to wait for a queer historical, ladies.

There’s a thing to be said about you straight people as well. What Kafur is going through is being imposed on Padmini a thousand times worse. She is Kafur’s mirror, tied by bonds of devotion, fidelity and tradition, she suffers as well, although, stoically and with that final scene opium-induced beatific smile on her face. What Kafur suffers emotionally, Padmini suffers materially and physically. Along with heterosexual love come the facts that she will be confined to the Zenanaof the palaces forever doing her Ghoomar. She won’t command armies even though she’s clearly more competent than the rest of the Hukum-saas combined, and and, she will burn herself alive after her fuckall husband finally kicks the bucket. Both Kafur and Padmini are better than their partners at everything they do, but they remain the seconds in command forever. 

I remember shutting my laptop and lighting a cigarette after the movie ended, several thoughts spinning in my head. I wanted to know what Kafur thought, what he did in the Khilji camp all day, how he felt about the fact that Khilji was waging this disastrous battle over a woman who he didn’t love either. (Speaking of which, we don’t know whether Khilji lusts after Padmini, wants her because she’s going to bring glory in accordance with what the treacherous Swamiji said, or whatever). The only same-sex relationship in the movie is woefully inadequate, its just incomplete and unsatisfying. As a gay man, you remember falling in love with that straight one when you were young, if you’re currently in love with a straight one, you feel fucked. I, for one, am sick and tired of seeing gay people leading emotionally dead lives and hopelessly pursuing unrequited love in most movies I watch, self respect be damned. So what does one do? One turns to imagination, of course, and in this case, a little historical detail.

For me, as I took a drag of the cigarette, I remembered that Kafur finally overthrew Khilji, installed Khilji’s small kid as puppet monarch, and himself became Regent. I chuckle, served that emotionally bullying and fuck-all Khilji right. I smile as I remember dumping that first love ‘straight’ boy and deciding that I wanted to be with someone who wasn’t afraid of holding my hand and wanting me. My smile widens, Kafur was the Queen after all, all this time being servile and trapped with this emotionally horrible partner for life, he was playing his own game all along, just look at the light in his eyes for confirmation. Move over the in-love timid boy who takes what he gets and cries silently at night, and enter the badass Queen who deserves to rule our hearts and Empire, and takes them in turns with a smile and a knife. Now if they only had the guts to make a movie about that!

P.S.- I think Kafur and Padmini would have made total badass BFFs. She looked like she needed better company anyway. I can see them sipping piña coladas on a gorgeous coconut tree-lined beach in Sri Lanka, far away from all the straight men in the world. Dream away, ladies. :*

*For all those who have heard of 2.0, the latest Rajni blockbuster directed by Shankar, (and those who haven’t, you poor peasants), here’s a break-down of the movie. This review shouldn’t stop you in any way from watching it, because, hello, if you don’t watch the newest Rajni movie, what are you doing with your lives? Get your Rajni on!*

2.0 has all the components of your quintessential Shankar movie:

• A mega star (The Superstar, in this case).

Rajnikanth is not just a star, he is a phenomenon in South India. If the fame, respect, adoration, love, and devotion (yes, you don’t just buy tickets for a Rajni movie, you purchase tickets for a darshan of the Lord Himself) that Rajni enjoys could be quantified into a statue, it would loom large over the new 3000 crore statue. And I’m sure that more people would identify Rajni quicker than they did Patel, but wait, what, I didn’t say anything, I mean, I like saffron and splurging on oh-so-useful statues. Long live cows!

• A heroine who is young enough to be the mega star’s grand-daughter.

Usually, the heroine would be trained in a modicum of acting or at least have two types of expressions on her face that could be classified as ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ and some are skilled to the extent that they can put on a lovey-dovey face (which usually makes it seem like they are suffering from constipation, but hey, it’s what the masses want – a love-struck expression, not constipation – and you gotta play to the gallery.) Amy Jackson has reached new lows in this movie. She has received her training from the school of minimalist acting (read: a school that teaches one to how to look like a human yet still have the expressions of a dead tree on one’s face). That’s why this role must have been Amy’s dream role. It’s a match made in heaven. Even the SBA’s cent-per-cent accurate mentor-mentee matchup algorithm couldn’t have made a better match. She plays the role of a robot. But the catch is that she’s still a robot modelled after an Indian woman and as a stereotypical Indian woman must be, when asked what her interests are, she replies that they revolve around movies, TV serials and make-up. Yes, here we finally have a woman robot who kicks ass but who still succumbs to the Vani-Ranis and the Naaginis of the day. Talk about having the best of both worlds (Yes, honey, I’ll go to work but don’t worry, I’ll cook and wash the clothes and take care of the kids and do all the household jobs as well.) We must all strive to be this perfect Indian woman. Thanks, Amy, for showing us the way.

• Gravity-defying fight scenes that are so fantastical that they make this grand-daughter typed heroine fall in love with the mega star.

And to add to those, the 3D effects are great. Both the five-year kid sitting next to me and I were shrieking in excitement when the bullets came zooming towards us because of the 3D effects. The kid’s mom gave me the dirtiest look ever and internally I was like, ‘I’m in Law School and that’s the only thing throwing itself at me at the moment. I’m going to take it.’ I don’t think she sympathized with me though or maybe she read my mind or something, for she made her kid switch seats, taking it away from anything that is associated with Law School (yes, her problem is with Law School, not with me, or so I like to think). I feel like this is what my mother also should’ve done when the topic of Law School first came up – warned me to run away as far as I could have.

• A bad, bad villain and revenge by the mega star.

The villain has a senti life story, which could have the potential to make the movie greyer and introduce some ethical turpitude in the mind of the hero and the audience, but is always painted over by loud shades of black, to justify the hero killing the villain in the end. This is especially prominent in a Shankar film, as opposed to films by other renowned Tamil directors. Especially after just having had my idea of objectivity and truth thrown out the window, this aspect seems problematic as it ends up othering the villain. (As all first years hopefully know by now, ‘It is only within a standpoint that privileges objectivity and absolutes that relativism and pluralism present a problem’.) Suck it, Shankar. It’s time for you to attend a History course at Law School.

• Three hours of a tussle between the bad, bad villain and the mega star completely devoid of logic.

The director assumes that the audience leave their brains at home, (which they do, I mean, it is a Shankar film.) There was a bit of mambo-jambo in 2.0 where the aura of dead sparrows and a dead man merge into some gigantic eagle-type avatar protected by cell phones. This avatar has the power to enter the bodies of other human beings which makes it hard to kill the said human beings, for, don’t kill the messengers, right? There is a very funny scene in 2.0 which is very Anniyan-like, with a split personality. To all you North-Indian non-South-Indian-movie-watchers-because-it-is-beneath-your-dignity (Hmm, I wonder what sort of an effect a History I course is having on me), think of the scene in Chennai Express where Deepika unleashes her dual personality: ‘Thangabaleee, kitta varadhe, nan jora odhipen da// nan unna vida matten// kitta varadhe’ (Thangabalee, don’t come close, I will harm you// I won’t let you go// Don’t come close). Now that I think about it, maybe this dialogue from the perspective of 2.0 is a warning to the audience: “Don’t come close. I will harm you and damage your brain cells with my mind-numbing levels of stupidity.” See, to all the Chennai Express haters out there, there’s so much of depth and this totally justifies my watching that film 15 times.

While these are the components of a generic Shankar film, I found that in this movie, there was another meta component altogether.

• Feminism.

While a pretty woman (a normal, pretty woman, not the hooker, Good Lord, abishtu, abishtu) is the only thing related to women in most of Shankar’s films, I was able to unearth a very deep analogy (that he might or might not have intended; my bet is on the latter).

Warning: Spoiler alert (but this can be easily figured out by watching a video song that’s been released on YouTube. It’s like they wanted to give the “suspense” away.)

In this movie, the villain really really likes birds and goes on rants all the time about how they are essential to the survival of man. When mobile towers are erected, they interfere with whatever it is that these birds depend on for navigation, leading to their deaths and the villain’s argument is that unless we save these birds, we will also die. (Two responses: a) J.M. Keynes said ‘We are all dead in the long run’ and b) Thanos, feeling efficient much? To kill humans #101: erect mobile towers. Saves us the pain of watching our most beloved avengers die. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself, Marvel, making poor kids cry.) Anyway, the dying don’t stop and feeling very frustrated, the villain commits suicide cuz like they all in this together. Then, aura-avatar-birdman is defeated only by mini versions of the robot hero fighting him, all the while perched atop doves. This is because the avatar won’t attack other birds, as the avatar is pro-life (not pro-choice, insert eye roll). Piggy-backing on these birds, the microbot, 3.0, is able to force the villain into submission and kills him.

Similarly, women – they are also quintessential to the survival of mankind because, duh, reproduction but men have been creating these oppressive structures, because, just as a beloved member of the Law School community once said, ‘We are the superior species.’ As a response to this oppression, there are waves of feminism, which unite women and help them in their fight for equality. But then there are random people piggy-backing on these movements (just like I am now, on Megha’s movie column) – corporates, other-agenda groups and even the government sometimes (beti bachao, but beti will make only roti in life – see latest ad by the Govt.) This delegitimizes the movement and turns the fight inwards, leading to a crack in the unified avatar. Ultimately, the men, who are the ‘heroes’ of this story (LOL, sorry, can’t even say that with a straight face), along with the piggy-backers, win.  I don’t know if Shankar was trying to make some meta argument while making the film, but this is something that I personally took away from 2.0. Or maybe you could just write it off as me being an ‘over-sensitive’ woman, literally.

All-in-all, I cannot say that it was a bad film, for fear of getting lynched by Thalaivar fans, but all I can say is that, initially, when the words ‘Superstar Rajnikanth’ used to flash on the screen (in the 1990s and 2000s), it used to be accompanied by this cheer of sorts from the movie ‘Annamalai’. Now, it just has sirens blaring in the background, from the movie Kabali or warning piano sounds, from the movie Enthiran itself, I think. (If you can’t recognise these names, plis work on building Rajni knowledge – v. important for survival in case you land up in Tamil Nadu.) Therefore, if Rajni is being introduced in a movie with warning sounds by the director himself, I’d say it’s time for the Superstar to do some self-introspection and see what he wants to do when he realises that his time is actually done.

Tumbbad is from the same people who made Ship of Thesesus. I haven’t seen the latter, though I have seen an excellent parody of it.[1] However Tumbbad is not your quintessential frustratingly vague and abstract Arthouse Film^TM. It’s a well-made film with a simple message: Greed Sucks. If you’re expecting a Prestige-level complicated plot, then perhaps the film might be underwhelming for you. However the film’s genius lies in two things – first, its execution and cinematography; and second, the way it subtly interlinks the themes of greed and gluttony with feudalism, Brahmanical patriarchy, and the heralding of post-colonial capitalism.

The premise of the movie is a Maharashtrian version of the Greek Cronos-Tartarus myth: Poorti Devi, the Goddess of Prosperity, gives birth to 160 million gods and goddesses at the beginning of time. Her first and favourite child is the demon Hastar. Hastar is your Typical Indian Firstborn Male^TM – spoilt, entitled, and wants to steal his siblings’ food and their gold. While he manages to get his hands on the gold, like any self-respecting younger sibling, the gods refuse to let him take their daily bread. I don’t know if this is a subtle commentary on how capitalism makes you more desperate for money than satisfying your daily needs or basically just the fact that nobody likes people taking their food. Anyhow, since Poorti Devi is a Typical Indian Mother^TM, she saves Hastar from being devoured by his siblings and imprisons him deep within her womb for his safety. She does so on the condition that he will be forgotten in time and nobody will ever worship him again.

This deal works for a million years or so, until the protagonist Vinayak Rao’s ancestors decide to build a shrine to awaken the demon (How they manage to recall him after aeons of being forgotten is never explained). As a result the village of Tumbbad is cursed to eternal rain and darkness, but who cares? You see, Hastar shits gold. Literally. The protagonist has one job to maintain his monthly bank balance – to catch golden coins out of Hastar’s ass. How exactly he does it is something you must watch the movie to find out-half of the movie’s thrill lies in the Rao family’s Secret Golden Enema technique. Inevitably Hastar loses his shit (see what I did there-hehe) and Bad Things Happen. I don’t blame him; I don’t care if my ass shits gold, you don’t get to touch it without my permission!

The movie is not for the faint hearted for sure; there is a creepy zombie grandma, flour voodoo dolls, and of course gold-shitting Baby Hastar who’s obviously more adorable than Taimur Ali Khan. But it’s not a scary movie, per se. What’s more interesting is the way Vinayak Rao’s story shifts with the change in the prevailing socio-economic circumstances in pre and post-independent India. The movie never suggests that Vinayak Rao meets the fate he does entirely because it runs in his blood or entirely because he is an entitled Brahmin male. It may be argued that he would have been cursed even if he’d been a nice guy who took care of his family or if he’d only taken as much gold he really needed (What’s especially ironic is that Vinayak Rao tells his business partner the fable about the goose who gave golden eggs in the first half of the movie, and then proceeds to entirely ignore the moral of that tale in the second half). At the same time the movie makes you aware that Vinayak Rao is doomed not just because he’s genetically oriented towards stealing gold from a demon’s butthole, but because he is the kind of guy who wastes all his money on fine clothes and alcohol (The story takes place 50 years before the advent of hedge funds) and thinks it’s okay to take his 14 year old son to a brothel to mark him as a ‘man.’ You also know that the story wouldn’t have taken place in a universe where widows were not stripped of their financial and sexual independence, and either forced into sati or sold into prostitution by their male relatives. Forget about having a well-adjusted childhood, Vinayak Rao wouldn’t have been born if his mother hadn’t become a landlord’s mistress to earn her livelihood after being widowed.

Further, the movie never paints him as an absolute Bad Guy. He’s a terrible husband, a shitty father, a treacherous business partner, and a Feudalistic Womanizer^TM. Yet it’s these very weaknesses that make you sympathize with his predicament in the end. It may be argued that if Tumbbad had starred Mukesh Ambani, the movie would have ended with Hastar signing a Joint Venture Agreement for monthly extraction of gold coins at Wall Street approved rates. However the movie works because Vinayak Rao is not a suave South Bombay capitalist – he’s an illegitimate child, and like millions of lesser-endowed villagers, he is powerless before the legal requirement of documentary evidence to show possession of land. In that sense maybe Tumbbad is not a story about the evils of capitalism per se at all, but a warning on the perils of start-up culture. Do your due diligence, warna Hastar aa jaayega.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENrFprZ9Ssk

Law school has ruined watching Bollywood movies for me. After doing 2 History and Sociology courses, I just cannot stand period dramas anymore. I need accuracy to detail, in costumes, gadgets, language, everything. I even demand accuracy in my villains. After Lagaan, this is the second movie where I wanted the Evil White Guy^TM to win. (Is it a coincidence that both starred Aamir Khan in the lead role?) I don’t know whether this is because I can no longer stand moral absolutism in fictional narratives or simply because that’s just how annoying the script was. It could also be because Lord Clive aka Lloyd Owen is a SNAAAACK. I haven’t crushed this hard on a British villain since Captain Andrew Russell in Lagaan. He’s played the Magnificent Bastard (1) to perfection.

Thugs of Hindostan, to give a Megha summary, is a story of how Aamir Khan grapples with his disorder of pathological lying. This is an exercise that I wish straight men would undertake more often-half of the problems of law school women would be solved. Unfortunately, it has little value as a storytelling exercise. In fact, the film has little in the way of a story, which is the basic minimum I demand from a Bollywood film, no matter how trashy it is in other respects. It could be argued there is a skeletal plot hanging in there somewhere like the threads of my sanity every time Shahid Kapoor uttered ‘Rajput’ during Padmaavat but it’s just too…flat to be taken seriously. Kind of like Katrina’s face in the movie.

Speaking of Katrina, the makers of the movie picked a very intelligent strategy in releasing one-minute teasers of both her item songs dance numbers so that hormonal lads can come flocking to the theaters and spend their parents’ hard earned money on the opportunity to objectify her for a sum total of 10 minutes. However, to give her credit, it is visible that she really did work extremely hard on both her item songs dance numbers. I have been attending Zumba + dance classes for 2 months but I will probably require 2 spinal surgeries and die an excruciatingly painful death before pulling off the jumps and twists she has done in the film.

The makers did another extremely intelligent thing by making sure that she only had 5 minutes of speaking time in the movie, but at crucial plot points, thus avoiding any criticism with respect to her acting abilities, while also ensuring that the film very narrowly passes the Lamp Test and the Bechdel Test. Unless she was just a special species of Magical Dancing Lamp who can flirt with men and harbor feelings of anti-colonialism. I mean you never know, Magical Dancing Lamps can do everything that women can you know. They also want equality.

The other female lead in the movie, apart from Katrina Kaif’s Abs, is Fatima Sheikh, the cutie from Chachi 420. She plays a Bollywood Warrior Princess^TM in the film. She is mentored in her journey from annoying 8-year-old tomboy with anger issues to annoying 18-year-old tomboy with anger issues by Amitabh Bachchan’s character who is the Worst Therapist Ever. He literally tells her at one point of the film, hey don’t let go of your anger babez, keep it inside you and nurse it forever so you can use its power to defeat the evil gora log. Mental illness crippling you in achieving life goals is such a 2018 millennial snowflake thing. Our Rajput ancestors knew better.

Anyway, Aamir Khan’s character keeps flirting with her throughout the film and in the end, one character even suggests that she has fallen in love with him. Thankfully they refrain from showing any physical intimacy between the two but seriously…she literally played your daughter in the last film you all did together. Katrina’s character pretends to be blissfully unaware of this and the film avoids any complicated love triangle BS. I suppose that’s unfair on my part though, how could Abs possibly be jealous of anyone, they’re just muscles after all.

Before I delve too much into Abs and Angry Princess’ love triangle, here’s what was promised in the title:

1. Watch Dhoom 3. I watched it before I watched The Prestige so I still enjoyed it. Besides c’mon I know everybody secretly enjoys Uday Chopra being a goof, that’s what the franchise runs on amirite?
2. Just kidding, watch The Prestige. You probably won’t enjoy movies again because every plot twist will look lame in comparison, but whatever Hugh Jackman heylooo
3. Also watch Baahubali, both films, back-to-back while you’re at it. The film has tried too hard, and too evidently, to copy the Baahubali Not that the latter doesn’t have its problems but seriously-Amitabh Bacchan’s Khudabaksh=Katappa. Aamir Khan=Mahendra Baahubali. Zaphira=Warrior Princess Avanthika. Even some of the choreography in Vashmalle was copied from Manohari. If all of this is sounding Greek and Latin to you, good. There is hope. The Maahishmati kingdom will come for you.
4. Ruminate on whether the Lamp Test and the Bechdel Test are real guarantees of how well-written a female character is if all you need is some intelligent writing to bypass both while objectifying the said female character at the same time.

(Somewhere in a script narration in a suburban Bombay film studio: Director-But Suraiyya cracks dick jokes! In 1806, mind you! I mean if that isn’t liberated, I really don’t know what these feminists want)

5. Watch Game of Thrones or Hunger Games or idk Cardcaptor Sakura or any show/movie about a Strong Female Lead with Anger Issues^TM which is relatively less annoying. Though to be honest, the entire trope has become annoying at this point.
6. Read up on the history of colonialism in India. Think about whether colonialism really brought our doom or were we doomed from the beginning. The film at various points hints at how Indians are Indians’ worst enemies but then chooses to return to the same old Hindustan v. Gora dynamic.
7. What is Hindustan really? Read up on nationalism(s) and the building of the nation-state. I mean heck, the characters in the film aren’t even fighting for Indian independence or the Indian flag, they’re fighting for some fictional principality. The movie should be called Thugs of Raunakpur. I was sniggering throughout the climax thinking wait for 1947 babes. They’re going to force you to join the Indian union, take away your privy purse, and then the fort whose azaadi you keep blabbing about is going to become a 5-star hotel to host destination weddings for the descendants of the goras you threw out 200 years earlier.
8. Read up on casteism in Hindu mythology. Thugs has a very interesting scene where the gora villain calls the freedom fighters personifications of Raavan, and sets an effigy of Raavan on fire with an arrow, metaphorically standing in for Ram. No, the movie is still lame as hell, still wouldn’t recommend watching it. Read Anand Neelakantan’s Asura. Read the story of Mahabali. Read about Persian mythology and how it’s the inverse of Hindu mythology. Read up on Eklavya and Karna. Burn a copy of the *beep* Smriti (not Irani) while you’re at it.
9. Basically, read. Just read and make your children read too so that when they grow up they don’t hoist the flag of Raunakpur and pronounce the glory of Akhand Raunakpur everywhere because like a certain Mr. Bhagat has commented who needs history when our countrymen have shitty Bollywood movies to teach them about it.
10. As a reward for the above, treat yourself to a viewing of Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikander or Andaz Apna Apna when both Aamir Khan and movie plots were cuter.

If you were already convinced the movie was tatti and had decided not to watch it, congratulations. For those of you whose parents are determined to make you waste your time in the post-Diwali weekend, show this review to them. There is still hope.

*Quirk regrets to inform that the author of this article has mysteriously disappeared. An unfinished draft of the article was found on her computer. While the circumstances of her disappearance are unknown, her friends and family suspect it is on account of State authorities having tapped her Whatsapp messages to her friends about the movie, where she very energetically discussed the thoughts of Aamir Khan’s character on Azaadi. According to Firangi Mullah, Azaad is not one person, but a soch, a thought, which can enable one to free themselves from the gulaami of their colonizers. She was also discussing how it is curious how the main characters of the film are Muslim and in that context the allegory of the villain Clive as Lord Ram perhaps makes sense. Ms. Mehta’s friend vociferously denied any knowledge of what she was babbling about and when asked for a quote simply said ‘The reason he keeps saying Azaad Azaad is because that’s his son’s name. It’s advance promotion because he’s already feeling insecure about how his son will compete with Taimur when both of them are launched, hence he wants to create an impression in audience’s minds already.’ We at Quirk wholeheartedly agree with this explanation and wish Ms. Mehta the best, wherever she is.*

References

1. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard

Gold is a decent one-time watch. Not the least because it has both Amit Sadh and Kunal Kapoor, both of whom are quite snack worthy (the former might just replace Vicky Kaushal in my list of snacks). There’s also Akshay Kumar playing a loser – yes you heard that right – and not some macho police officer/secret agent/misguided navy official turned-murderer for the first time in ages. I’d almost forgotten how endearing he can be in his Hera Pheri/Housefull mode.

Anyway a brief summary: Gold is a fictionalized version of the first gold medal that Independent India’s hockey team won in the Olympics. The movie begins in the 1936 Berlin Olympics – where apparently Adolf Hitler had made a speech denouncing the cause of Indian Independence. While I understand the maker’s need to show him as a ho-ho, Evil Despot, I found this false narrative of how Hitler was in favour of colonialism kind of jarring given the legends about his assistance to Subhash Chandra Bose – but I suppose the Indian nationalist link with Nazi Germany is a boundary no Bollywood writer is brave enough to push (just like how nobody talks about the Hindu right having links with the Raj. Lul.) The movie also shows Hitler walking away in typical frustrated Bollywood firangi style when India wins the match which is again kind of weird given that he apparently had major respect for Major Dhyan Chand (who has been renamed ‘Samrat’ in this movie and is played by the extremely dishy Kunal Kapoor…like hmmmm) and even offered him a job, but whatever, I suppose you can’t make a Indian sports film without making an evil caricature out of every white person in the movie.

The rest of the movie is about how Tapan Kumar Das, the manager of the team, spears them to victory 12 years, 1 World War and 1 Partition later, in the 1948 London Olympics. Das, played by Kumar, is an alcoholic and an embezzler – which is why the shock that Akshay Kumar took up this role because, to be honest, apart from his patriotism and his love for hockey, there’s not much to love about the guy unless you’re into the whole bamboozling drunkard thing. Also his fake Bengali accent is extremely annoying, and I’m a Gujju, I can’t even imagine how irritating it would be for a real Bong. The real heroine of the film in that sense should have been Mounabina, his long-suffering wife who for some reason keeps mortgaging her jewels to finance his dreams for the Indian hockey team. But then I forget that this was 1940’s India and women didn’t really have much control over their money and assets once they got married (no comments on whether India in 2018 is the same).

Gold is also unconventional in the sense that it’s been written and directed by a female director, and has only 2 prominent female characters in the film, both of whom essay love interests – because it’s an Akshay Kumar film at the end of the day, duh – about a team of 20 odd hockey players. In that sense it’s just a gender reversal of Chak de India, right up to the bitchy internal team dynamics. I suppose in a way it’s funny to see a film about how boys aren’t exactly the exemplars of teamwork and maturity. Our resident Regina George is Kunwar Raghubir Pratap Singh, played by Amit Sadh, who is, hmm, dishyyy. Like there is Vicky Kaushal who is Snack and then there is Prince…Disshyyy. Anyway, Kunwarji is a typical rich spoilt brat who thinks he’s the bestest centre forward eva, but unfortunately faces competition from our resident Underdog^TM, Himmat Singh. The conflict between the two forms the main tension point of the film.

One thing I liked about Gold that it was more forthcoming about the caste angle than say a Dhadak, which released earlier this year. In one of the initial confrontation scenes, Mean Boy tells the Underdog ‘Thakur hain hum. Why should I need to explain anything to you?’ That scene speaks volumes. Thakursahab has servants accompanying him wherever he goes and is too delicate to pick up his own luggage. The captain of the team is a Brahmin. The ‘villagers’ are made to sit on the bench; though the film says it’s for strategic reasons. However, even assuming this is true, nobody bothers to explain to Himmat, right till the end, why he’s being made to wait till he gets a chance to play. Whereas everyone takes maximum effort to make sure Kunwarji’s precious princely ego is not hurt. Tapan especially is ingratiating towards the prince’s character and tries to soothe his pride even when the senior players are trying to knock sense into him. Kunal Kapoor, who is coaching the team, also observes that the players are unable to develop team spirit because of their regional biases. The scene where Tapan and Samrat see the players dining and socializing separately reminded me a lot of law school, and how we end up bunching off into cliques that are determined by class/caste more than we realize.

Another one of Gold’s plus points is that it addresses the Partition without demonizing the Muslim/Pakistani characters. I would have been seriously mad if they would have made a film on post-independence without bringing in Partition. In fact, the film acknowledges the tragedy that the best players of the pre-Independence era are forced to flee and adopt the flag of another nation, and then play the Indian team as rivals barely 2 years later.

However Gold’s biggest flaw is that it merely checkboxes these issues without dwelling on them any further. At the end of the day, it’s a film helmed by an A list star, and hence it ends up focusing too much on Akshay Kumar’s character to develop the other plotlines. We don’t see the full extent of trauma that a person compelled to change their nationality, and their home, because of religion would have to undergo. We also don’t see the conflict between Mean Boy and Underdog resolved completely – it’s stretched till a point where I was like, oh just kiss and hook up already! And then when they do patch up, it’s a ripoff of the football match scene from Student of the Year – you don’t have to watch the latter scene if you haven’t, but suffice to say, borrowing plot points from KJo films may not be the best cinematic writing exercise. I say this in spite of my love for trashy Dharma films. It’s also extremely jarring to see them fight after Dishy Coach has already made them do team unity exercises and even gives Mean Boy an extremely convenient anecdote from his own experience on how teamwork helps you win. (of course, the anecdote ends up repeating itself when Mean Boy and Underdog finally become ‘bros’).

It’s also sad how for a film written and directed by a woman, it barely passes the Lamp Test-another pitfall of being bankrolled by an A-lister I guess. The only role women have to play in the film is psychological support. As mentioned earlier, the role of Akshay Kumar’s wife, like his wife in the 100 cop movies he did prior to this, is only there to cook for him and his team, be patient and wear beautiful sarees and have her hair and makeup on point even when he’s getting drunk and pawning her jewels. Underdog^TM has a girlfriend, but her role is limited to being a copy of Sonam Kapoor’s in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag – the Penelope to his Odysseus, waiting for her sports hero boyfriend to come home. I suppose the only point of the track is to show that people had more liberty in their love life 70 years ago than now.

The most uncomfortable moment in the film for me was when the national anthem plays in the end. Regardless of the legal position on this issue, it’s impossible to not feel like a pariah if you’re the only person sitting when the entire theatre stands, so I stood too. However the film (and this moment) really made me think – is this all what nationalism is about? All said and done the film shows a group of men trying to let go of their prejudices for the team. I wonder how many of us in our own lives are willing to let go of our silly little biases and do something for the country? Cuz if you aren’t then you’re just a technicolor patriot and there’s no difference between you and aunty-national sickular libtards like me who believe a ‘nation’ is an abstract concept and who need to be sent to the neighbouring country. Lul.

Next up on MwM: Shanaya ka Sairat Dhadak. Special MM Koffee hamper to whoever can guess where the ‘Luls’ are borrowed from.

Our in-house movie enthusiast and writer of  last holiday’s much anticipated Facebook movie reviews, Megha Mehta (Batch of 2019), takes one for the team and reviews a Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie (Padmaavat) for her new fortnightly column: Movies with Megha.  

I’ll admit, I am the unapologetic Bollywood addict in my group of friends. I am that hypocritical bitch who seems all intellectual and cool to hang out with on the outside, because she throws around words like savarna and caste-consciousness and patriarchy, but one SRK movie on Sony Max is all that it takes to reduce her to a puddle. I share the same kind of toxic relationship with Hindi films that certain people may with pornography, or Mills and Boon or certain questionable erotica novels – you could read reams of literature on how a certain media form promotes exploitation and subordination of your gender and still not completely boycott it because it appeals to something really basic within you, this primal need to stick to the comforting stereotypes you’ve been brought up with instead of having to perform the exhausting cognitive work of processing information without them.

One of my favourite unapologetic Bollywood tropes is the Bhansali film. If Karan Johar represents the neoliberal elite of Bollywood films, with his focus on the First World problems of urban upper-caste families and couples, SLB represents a kind of twisted alt-right-his films promote feminist and anti-brahmanical ideals as well as neo-conservative ideologies in exactly the right proportion required to appease gullible cinema goers. In fact the reason why his films might be more popular than KJo’s is because they appeal to broader savarna middle class sensibilities by painting them in the form of romantic fairytales. Even though they are largely ahistorical, they give the impression of being set in a particular historic context, which is why the drama, though over-the-top, is excusable. They allow you to escape to a fantasy world which is far removed from your own but is still filled with curiously relatable emotions and characters. However, either four years of critical thinking in law school have finally had their effect, or else he has lost his illusionary touch-for I found the fantasy world of Padmaavat hard to digest.

Reams have already been written on jauhar and the communal and casteist undertones underlying his latest epic fantasy offering. Padmaavat indeed promotes the communal agenda without even trying to be subtle about it. It’s an about-turn from Devdas, which all about a savarna fuckboy who goes on auto-destruct mode because his parents have a stick up their ass about being landowners. The striking contrast in the film is not between Shahid Kapoor’s literally whitewashed Ratan Singh and Ranveer Singh’s animalistic, barbarian Khilji, but between Ratan Sen’s relationship with Padmaavati and Khilji’s with his first wife, Mehrunnisa (played by the stunning Aditi Rao Hydari). Ratan Sen and Padmavati are the ideal modern Hindu Couple^TM: she kicks ass but subject to her husband’s discretion, whereas Mehrunnisa represents the fragile Muslim woman who must be saved from her evil, polyamorous Mohammedan husband’s appetites, cue UCC and triple talaq.

As for the jauhar debate, please note that cinematic depictions of mass suicide usually focus on the pain and panic prevalent in people’s minds at the time – Rang De Basanti’s scene on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre still sends chills down my spine. The experience of watching women screaming in terror as they jump in a well to avoid being shot is one that automatically traumatizes the audience. In Padmaavat, the trauma of watching women burning alive is sought to be diluted by showing them as walking calmly, in sync, with proud smiles on their faces. Jauhar as defined by Padmaavat is not a tragedy-it is an act of resistance, a final ‘Fuck You’ to Khilji and his like.

The scene certainly serves as grounds for introspection into the larger ideological contestation in the feminist movement: To what extent are certain acts, harmful to women, capable of being justified through the rhetoric of ‘choice’? To what extent do women possess ‘choice’, if any?

What really remains an enigma amidst all this is the central figure of the film and all the controversies surrounding it-Padmaavati herself. Who is she? First off, she’s the prime example of a lazily written ‘Strong Female Character’ trope. The film begins by showing her wounding Ratan Sen with an arrow while hunting, and ends by showing her jump into a fire to evade capture by invaders (She’s an atrocious shot so that might explain her lack of faith in her self-defense skills). Like Mastani in Bajirao Mastani, her ‘warrior princess’ side is demonstrated only once in the film, though she atleast gets to indulge in some strategical maneuvering against her opponents, unlike poor Deewani M, who is reduced to being a Manic Pixie Dream Dancer.

Why was it necessary for SLB to include a scene like that in the film, given that she spends the rest of the film wearing 20 kilo lehengas/sarees and behaving like a 13^th century version of an Ekta Kapoor heroine? He could have easily shown her bewitching Shahid with a classical dance or through some flirtatious repartee, as he has in his earlier films (Why is it necessary to always have the couple fall in love in the middle of a battle anyway, god knows in real life most of us are too lazy to even pass the remote to each other).

Further, we receive little information or context about Padmaavati’s upbringing. Hence the audience is clueless as to why a princess brought up in a kingdom at the tip of the subcontinent, one that seems to allow considerable liberties to its women (as demonstrated by her garb, ability to hunt, and indulgence in eye-sex with men she is not married to), would assimilate into a foreign (Northern) culture to the extent of adopting its purdah, dance forms, dressing style as well as its incredible strategy of self-immolation for countering invading rapists. I know women who feel out of place at their in-laws’ after 10 years of marriage – Padmaavati achieves total integration with Rajput culture after barely 2 years. The film seems to indicate that she has been brought up in a Buddhist society-she nurses Ratan Sen back to health from the arrow wound in a monastery-but we see no introspection from her side on the violence caused due to war and the implication of an act like jauhar. However the film also doesn’t give context on why a Buddhist girl is hunting for sport like a common princess, so difficult to expect logic here.

The contradictions don’t end here. It’s not that Padmaavati becomes a damp squib after marriage-she exhorts her husband to banish the priest spying on them, as opposed to merely imprisoning him and categorically calls out her co-wife for victim-blaming when the latter insinuates that Padmaavati’s ‘beauty’ is responsible for Khilji’s assault on Mewar. She also decides to show herself to Khilji and thereby satiate his desire in order to avoid subjecting her populace to war. This is in defiance of Ratan Sen’s vehement views about how she would be ‘defiled’ if Khilji were even to lay eyes on her. In retrospect, I don’t blame the poor woman for committing suicide given how anal her husband was about Rajput ‘honor’ and custom-it’s quite possible he emotionally manipulated her into subscribing into his ideologies, which is a story-telling exercise the film obviously doesn’t indulge in.

Further, she goes to rescue Ratan Sen when he is kidnapped by Khilji-because dear Ratan Sen was too patronizing and stuck up on ‘Rajput honor’ to take her advice when she warned him that Khilji is a traitorous bitch. In fact most of her problems are not because she is too beautiful, but because her husband lacks political acumen, or common sense for that matter. It’s not that Ratan Sen takes all of her little rebellions lightly-in one scene he explicitly tells her that political matters are none of her business; while in another; he chastises her for risking her ‘honor’ to come rescue him while he is in prison. When they return to Mewar, he has a conspicuously sour expression on his face when the populace sings praises of her more than they do of him and changes the topic to the sacrifice of his vassals when she leaves the scene.

However through all of this, Padmaavati is careful to never cross a limit-the accursed ‘lakshman rekha’ that is drawn for all women but particularly one that exists for a woman belonging to Hindu nobility. She takes her husband’s permission for immolating herself-a plot point that sorely defeats any ‘It was her choice! It’s an expression of active agency, not oppression!’ rhetoric regarding her decision to commit jauhar. She happily touches his feet during Holi, and is careful to cover her head on all occasions when in the company of strange men. Overall, she remains blindingly devoted to him even when half the audience is ready to murder him for waxing eloquent on Rajput ethics while his kingdom is at the brink of destruction.

In that way Padmaavati is not so far-removed from the privileged Indian women of today (including the Bollywood-crazy author of this article), whether such privilege is on account of class, caste, education or otherwise. We challenge the patriarchy, but at the same time are complicit in participating in structures that maintain its operation. We study, we drive, we drink, we smoke, we have pre-marital sex, we indulge in all kinds of behaviours that a Padmaavati would have considered scandalous, unethical even. But then we marry men, and happily subordinate ourselves to their wishes. We integrate ourselves into their families at the expense of our emotional and psychological well-being. We adopt their customs and ideologies in the same way Padmaavati comes to subscribe to her husband’s totalitarian and pernicious caste code. We speak out against rape and sexual assault only when it is committed by men whom we can Otherize-strangers, foreigners, men belonging to other castes and religions-but we insist on ‘benefit of doubt’ and ‘due process’ when it comes to People Like Us^TM.

This conundrum is seen across all of SLB’s films-in Devdas, both Paro and Chandramukhi at various points question feudal patriarchal practices without ever breaking out of the system, in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Nandini exhorts her sister to run away after marriage, but is dependent on her husband to re-unite with her own lover, in Bajirao Mastani, Mastani is a warrior princess who ultimately succumbs to torture and imprisonment at the hands of her in-laws. We are all Paros and Nandinis and Mastanis-we challenge the system but we never abandon it. We give up. We ‘settle.’ This ties in with existing projects to ‘discipline’ feminism and to mould it into an ideology that can serve dominant interests even when it appears to challenge them. Therefore going back to the lakshman rekha point, women’s liberation is only tolerable till a certain ‘limit’- SLB’s female characters, fantastical as they are, reveal the operation of this limit. It’s also why Padmaavat is laughing all the way to the box office in spite of glorifying such a dangerous ideology -it represents the current national ideal, a woman who is subservient and subverting at the same time. She challenges gender hierarchies only when they don’t interfere with the ones created by her class, caste, religion and region.  She is therefore the Indian White Feminist^TM.

The kind of cinema we make both reflects our social and moral aspirations and shapes them. We must critique whether the kind of woman we aspire to be is a SLB heroine – trapped in a contradiction of challenging the patriarchy while continuing to follow other oppressive hierarchies – or whether we intend to aim for something more radical.