Pink movie review: Gather everyone and go watch this film
Pink movie review: Amitabh Bachchan's elderly lawyer is the only weak link in this powerful and brave film about real women who are forced to face the rage of entitled males. Their crime is they said no.
Pink movie review: This movie doesn’t need Amitabh Bachchan to be in a pulpit of his own but the director seems to be too awe-struck to tell him so.
Pink movie cast: Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Andrea Tariang, Amitabh Bachchan, Angad Bedi, Raashul Tandon, Vijay Varma, Tushar Pandey, Piyush Mishra, Dhritimaan Chatterjee, Vinod Nagpal, Dibang
Pink movie director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Pink movie director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
All those associated with the making of Pink, please take a deep bow: finally, a powerful, brave Hindi mainstream film which focuses on real young women who live real lives and deal with thorny day-to-day issues, which young women the world over will identify and relate with.
I know where the young leads in Pink are coming from. And I know too many women who have been in their place, or missed being in that place by a scary, scarring whisker.
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Bottomline, when a girl says no, she means no. En O, which means ‘nahin’, nada, don’t want. It means go away, don’t bother me. It can also be a prelude to stronger language if the aggressor in question refuses to back off. The young woman can wear short skirts or jeans or Tees. She can be present at rock concerts. She can laugh and reach out to a young man in a friendly fashion. She can have a drink or two in his company. She can even be, shudder, sexually experienced.
Hearing the phrase ‘are you a virgin’ in a Bollywood film in a meaningful, non-smirky manner? Fantastic. Underlining a woman’s freedom to own her sexuality? Priceless.
When she says no, it means only one thing. No grabbing. No forcing. Take that groping hand and mouth away. She isn’t easy. She isn’t a person of ‘loose morals’. She is not, never, ever, asking for it.
That it has taken Bollywood to make a movie which says it so clearly, without beating about the bush, without prevaricating or using obfuscatory language, tells us a great deal about the country we live in, and the social mores that its women have had to live by, buried under crippling patriarchy and misogyny and a sense of mistaken shame.
The three female protagonists of Pink are your regular young women. Minal (Tapsee Pannu) is an events manager, whose work can extend into the late hours. Falak (Kriti Kulhari) works in a corporate set-up where image is all. Andrea (Andrea Tariang) is from the ‘North-East’ (Meghalaya, she says, but clearly no one is interested in the specifics: girls from the ‘North East’ are fair game, even if they are covered from top to toe). The girls share a flat in a ‘posh’ South Delhi locality, and we meet them first when they are heading back in a cab in the early hours of the morning, disturbed about something that has just happened.
As the plot (oh joy, a plot, verily), terse and on-point, unravels, we get to know that the trio was in the company of three young men, after a rock concert in Surajkund in Haryana. Things take an ugly turn at dinner and after, and the women have to make a run for it, and one of the young men ends up needing stitches in a deep bloody gash above his eye.
It doesn’t take a genius to discover that the political connections backing the injured Rajveer (Angad Bedi) and his friends, Dumpy (Raashul Tandon), Vishwa (Tushar Pandey) and another fellow (Vijay Varma) who wasn’t there but is happy to participate in the humiliation of the women, will try and turn the tables: instead of being the victims of a ghastly crime, they will be painted as the aggressors. How do you silence a courageous young woman who has the temerity to ask questions? You label her cheap, slut, whore: the film mutes the word ‘rxxx’, but you can see it emblazoned on the face of the guy who says it out loud and the girls who have to hear it.
Talking to indianexpress.com, Pink actress Taapsee Pannu said, “Not just that, I have been touched inappropriately in DTC buses. Rubbed at wrong places while in a bus.”
Pink reminded me of Jodi Foster’s The Accused in which her character is gang-raped in a bar: because she wears a short skirt, and has been drinking, she is made out to be a woman on the make. Something similar happens here, but it is all three women who have to bear the brunt of the rage that such male entitlement comes with: ‘aisi ladkiyon ka toh aisa hi haal hota hai’.
Punnu, Kulhari and Tariang, all very good, typify the dilemma of the modern working young women (they live in Delhi, and the young men are very much a part of a certain kind of coarse North Indian ethos — they bully but are too cowardly to do this on their own, needing patronage and protection from the nexus of `netas’ and police which exists only to protect them, not call them out on their wrong-doing), but this could happen anywhere, and not just in India.
The young men are also spot on. Bedi exudes menace: when he snarls out that awful expletive during the trial, you feel like shrinking, and wondering: how did we fail this generation, this youth of today, if they still feel like this? Or is it just a continuation of the way generations of men, only surface smooth-and-suave, have felt about women? Scratch a little, and patriarchal pus comes pouring out.
The other three guys are the kind of hangers-on who slip stream alongside a strong leader: if he is having fun (`mazey’ is the word used, and you feel faintly grubby after hearing it used in this manner), then so can they. ‘Behti Ganga mein sab haath dho sakte hain’, and girls who refuse to give in and lie back and enjoy it, be damned. How dare they?
The only weak link in this film is the elderly lawyer played by Amitabh Bachchan. Deepak Sehgall, we are told, is suffering from bipolar disorder, which means mood swings, which means Bachchan alternating between chewing out dialogue and being growly and forced. He takes on the girls’ case, and we want to cheer because he is the Bachchan and will make everything come right. But because he is Bachchan, the director handles him with kid gloves, and there goes the naturalism with which everyone else is playing their parts so effectively.
For the most part, the thespian comes off mannered, and you want to shout out and say, no, this film doesn’t need Bachchan to be in a pulpit of his own, when he is meant to be taking apart those who are in the witness box. Only occasionally during the second half (most of which is spent in the courtroom with the excellent Chatterjee as the presiding judge), Sehgall forgets he is Bachchan the Baritone, and lights up the screen with a couple of superb moments. It is in these moments you are face to face with the One and Only Bachchan, who should have been in exactly that mode through the film: why are his directors so chary about telling him what to do and how to do it, when he never tires of saying that he is a director’s actor?
Those sporadic moments make you nostalgic. Is there anyone out there who can craft a solid, challenging role for Bachchan? Anyone at all? Being awe-struck is not a good place for a filmmaker. I am waiting for the return of the actor who, back in his day, used to routinely blow my socks off in a way no one has even come close to in all these years.
Meanwhile, Pink, perhaps called thus because the colour is girly, subverts it and turns it on its head. In its best bits, the film blazes, its call-to-arms radiating outwards and forcing us to acknowledge uncomfortable truths. It has something to say, and says it with courage and conviction. Gather everyone and go; and while you are at it, spread the word.
