Matrubhoomi
by Tushar
The film ‘Matrubhoomi – A nation without women’ is an exceptionally powerful one by new comer Manish Jha. The theme dealt with is female infanticide in rural India. It is a fictionalised description of a village where there are NO women left because whenever a girl child is born she is disposed of. The director tries to imagine what life would be in such a setting. How would the absence of women affect life? What would the nature of interpersonal relations between the men be? The setting is eastern UP or Bihar.
The film is extremely well crafted. Cinematography by Venugopal is excellent. The ambience is authentically recreated and the lighting is marvellous. The background music is amazing. You can feel an undercurrent of tension running through the film which hits you with the force of a sledgehammer later on.
I found some flaws in the film. One of the criticisms is that the lone female protagonist is depicted as a helpless persone and the director has not given her any agency. I would argue that that is the reality in villages, particularly in North India, so whats wrong with depicting it? And I thought that the way he depicted the caste violence was a little amateurish. And ‘kalki’s(thats the name of the female protagonist – newcomer Tulip Joshi) hindi sounds a little out of place. The others in the film are obviously theatre people and authenically manage to carry off the dialect prevelant in the area.
Apart from these flaws, I think the film is a genuine attempt at exploring one of the burning issues in ‘Bharat’, unfortunately one that not many people in ‘India’ care about. But I would be interested in getting a feminist perspective on the film. I want to know what women think about it. So please watch this movie.
Comments
ah, you beat me to it dude…I had been thinking of posting abt this film! one technical point though…you say that you found some flaws…but in the very next sentence talk abt general criticism…and then in the next sentence contradict yourself by providing an argument against that criticism….my point is that they do not go together…othwerwise a nice review overall…
I loved the music too…it was very ‘Mahabharatean’ in its cope and theme and suited the film very very well…
And last but not the least it was heartening to note that Boney and Sridevi Kapoor had financed this film. If such mainstream producers begin to finance such good and thought-provoking films then I think we are in for an increase in such films…which will be a good thing of course.
I saw the film with Priti and the part about the lack of agency for the female protagonaist was her criticism of the film. So I included it here as an example of the kind of criticism that women would offer. The other flaws are what I thought were wrong with the movie.
Yeah…Its nice that Boney Kapoor and Sridevi are distributing the movie. Now if only people would go and watch the movie…