Fuck Bollywood! Fuck the Khans! Fuck the racist North
Indians! Bahubali is a blockbuster with a record opening in its first week and
nobody can simply get enough of it. Neither could I, and therefore dedicated one whole
evening to try and understand what 'CGI' meant. 'Imma be cool like that!'
Statutory warning for anybody who expects to read a film
review: you can stop right here and go watch Bajrangi Bhaijaan; the rest of the
cynics who are hurt every time a film is not even half of what its trailer
promises may continue reading.
For a longer part of this year, every time somebody said ‘Indian Cinema’ it sounded like ‘Bahubali’. You know, how Mr S.S Rajamouli had single-handedly decided to transform the face of Indian cinema by spending Rs Two Hundred and fifty-wait-for-it- Crore and the media couldn’t say, think or ask anything about the content or storyline because, 'Fuck all that! This dude just spent enough money to feed the entire country for a couple of days at least, so who cares? We’ll just relax in our royal recliners and have popcorn or sip pointlessly brain-freezing cold drink to digest our emotions as the regal orphan is brought up by the always awestruck tribal people.'
Now without any spoiler alert, I can tell you that the very
beginning of the film gave me a slight feel of Jungle Book, where there is an
abandoned infant and a strong motherly figure but hola! Within minutes of
having unbelievable graphics thrown at my face, I realized that it is about a
giant of a man who can’t get laid in his neighbourhood because of his bossy
mother and decides to risk his life only and only so that he can find the girl
who is hot enough for his tremendous masculinity. Anybody who begs to differ
will also call ‘E Laldupattewali tera nam toh bata’ a song of light humoured
friendship where the heroes do obscene facial expression and insist on touching
the heroines against their will because the Godmen of this country have
announced: ‘Women actually like rape’. Period.
If you have read any amount of literature or have watched
even one Pixar movie or had befriended me, even by mistake, then you should
already know where I am heading. Yes, from all those magnificent bloodshed and
self-righteous dialogue delivery, what stuck to me from Bahubali is the mating
sequence of the leading pair. No, it’s not a song sequence or a dream sequence, as they like calling it. Or even a romantic sequence for that matter. It’s an out and
out mating sequence where most of the mating was being done forcefully. You
may, and I repeat you may call it a ‘romanticized rape sequence’ but yeah,
that’s mostly all about it.
Even if I decide to overlook all my other problems with the
film, like over-rated graphics, bad junior artists, continuity mistakes and
lack of logic, I simply cannot overlook this magnificently romanticized rape
sequence that I COULD NOT believe was going on.
There is nothing, that I might say that would be sufficient
to express my disappointment with the filmmaker over that one sequence. The
character of Avanthika, played by Tamanna Bhatia is introduced
as a formidable female fighter who doesn’t care about looks or life but of
course that’s no way to lead a girl’s life, yo! So you need an oaf to come and rip
you off your clothes, paint your lips and touch you in all inappropriate ways
so that you can feel all feminine and then finally, fall for him.
I was stunned. Still, kind of, am. How on earth could a man think of passing this off as romantic? What unearthly spirits should possess a man to actually think that standing in the 21st Century, in our country, where one of the biggest problems right now are the innumerable crime against women, it is okay to propagate such objectification of the gender?
I was stunned. Still, kind of, am. How on earth could a man think of passing this off as romantic? What unearthly spirits should possess a man to actually think that standing in the 21st Century, in our country, where one of the biggest problems right now are the innumerable crime against women, it is okay to propagate such objectification of the gender?
After that, the whole time that I sat through the movie trying
to forget about the crater this film had made in my pocket, I realized that I
might just be the only person thinking about it right now. The rest of them
might be gloating over the strength that Rajamouli’s female characters portray.
The character ‘Shivagami’ for example is the apparent epitome of female
strength but she won’t sit on the throne because that’s what ages of Indian
patriarchy has taught us. And none of us have a problem with that. The fact
that the filmmaker allowed this one odd female to be strong is more than what
we can ask for.
We don’t even wince once, when the great ‘Bahubali’, the
ultimate man dances with the three sexy dancers in the ‘what-was-the-point-of-that-again’
scene because ‘hey, come on dude! A man’s gotta have his fun!’ That is what
young men are supposed to do. It is absolutely okay to behave like a pornstar with a woman outside your family.
I
mean that’s what Indian hypocrisy is all about. Because it’s ok if you pass a comment on a
female on a train as long as you don’t beat your wife up. Because staring at a
woman’s body is perfectly alright as long as you don’t let your daughter wear
short clothes. Because everything we say or do is a waste because nobody,
not a single person in that huge fucking crew of Bahubali had a problem with
these things. Nobody associated with that film pointed it out to the great
Rajamouli that it is wrong to demean women like this and the romanticization of
such violation encourages violence and crime against women. That after years of
having film heroes getaway with teasing their future wives on the road, it is
time that Indian Cinema made a different statement. That Avanthika should have
slapped the shit out of Shivudu.
