Author: Naseeruddin Shah
Smita Patil/
Director/Composer/Na: Ketan Mehta
Publisher: Eagle Video
Year: 2005
Language: multilingual
Pages: NA
ISBN/UPC (if available): EDVD
Description
Following its commercial release in New York, this became Mehta's best-known film outside India.
Intended as an allegory of colonial oppression but presented as a sex-and-violence drama, the film is set in pre-Independence Saurashtra. The despotic tax collector Subedar (Shah), dressed in a way that evokes British 19th C. catchpenny prints and Daumier's cartoons, imposes his rule on a village. All the villagers try to satisfy his every whim, except for the protesting schoolteacher (Gilani).
The drama starts when the beautiful Sonbai (Patil) is to be surrendered to the lecherous Subedar. She takes refuge in the courtyard of a spice factory run entirely by women and is protected by an aged watchman (Om Puri) who closes the gates to Subedar's men.
The movie also tells that you need not have to be strong to oppose injustice by various characters. In the whole village of Hindu men, who show there manliness by having a mistress.
There is only one man who stands up against the army to protect the dignity of his village women, an old Muslim watchman Abhu Mian (Om puri). A physically weak person of a minority community standing up when the majority fail to do so. An example of the fact that a person's strength lies in his mind not in his body.
It is not a typical art movie, which plays down on the melodrama part. This is a movie which is pretty much mainstream, loaded with dramatics, making it a spicier movie as suggested by the title. But it does not do the usual ending of a blood bath, the audiences are made to take action against the tyrant and end the movie. Just beautiful.
Although made in Hindi, the film draws on Gujarati verbal and performative idioms.
Starring:
Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Raj Babbar, Om Puri,
Deepti Navel, Suresh Oberoi.
Director: Ketan Mehta
Music Director: Chunilal Media
Producer: N F D C
Genre: Social, Offbeat