SHACKLE (SAANKAL)- 2015. DIRECTED BY
DEDIPYA JOSHII. STARRING TANIMA BHATTACHARYA, CHETAN SHARMA AND
HARISH KUMAAR.
NH10- 2015. DIRECTED BY NAVDEEP
SINGH. STARRING ANUSHKA SHARMA, NEIL BHOOPALAM, DARSHAN KUMAAR,
DEEPTI NAVAL AND TANYA PUROHIT DOBHAL.
In September 2015, I had the great
pleasure of watching both these films at my local library for free as
part of the 2015 Indian Film Festival Of Ireland. It was a gorgeous
warm day (we were having a bit of an Indian summer!) and, with my
complimentary tea and choccie biccies clutched in my hot little hands,
I was all set for a nice comfy cosy time. How wrong I was...!
Over the course of the next several
hours, I was alternately shocked, saddened and repeatedly challenged
as the two films played out back-to-back on the screen in front of
me. One told a story of arranged marriages of young boys to older
women in modern-day India, the other a chilling tale of honour
killing and brutality of the highest order in the same country, same
era.
SHACKLE started
out innocuously enough with a long car-journey and one friend driving
another friend to his (the driver's) village and family. But when the
passenger begins to read from the book he's written about the
driver's story of arranged marriage, pain and suffering, and then the
blossoming of an unlikely love, we're drawn into the film and remain
wrapped up in it till the last frame. I don't think I've ever seen
anything quite so powerful in my life.
In 1994, in a
village in Mumbai, an eleven-year-old boy called Kesar is forced to
marry a woman in her mid-twenties. There was nothing too unusual
about this kind of arrangement. It was brought into being when the
low numbers of marriageable males in the village was making it necessary for women
to marry old men or remain single, an undesirable state of affairs by anyone's standards.
Kesar,
understandably and through no fault of his own, hasn't a clue (or a
bull's notion, as we say here in Ireland) about women or being
married or any of that stuff. To Abeera, his beautiful but deeply
unhappy wife, he's naturally more of a son than a husband. She looks
after him to the best of her ability but the viewer can't help but
think: What kind of life is that for either of them?
When
Kesar grows up and decides that he wants to be a proper hubby to
Abeera, he is greatly hampered by the newly-discovered knowledge that
his father Usmaniya has been raping poor Abeera for years. It's not
certain whether Usmaniya is the father of Abeera's daughter Gudiya,
conceived since her marriage to Kesar. I assumed he was, however,
as it was made clear that the child couldn't be Kesar's and there was
no mention of Abeera's ever having had a lover.
When the
sleazy-as-hell Usmaniya clears off for a bit, just till the heat is
off him, Kesar and Abeera enjoy a period of great happiness and
togetherness. Kesar is finally able to consummate his marriage to
Abeera and be a proper father to Gudiya. Usmaniya's untimely and
unwelcome return, however, precipitates a train of events so tragic
that the newly-loved-up couple will feel the repercussions for years.
Can any good come out of this forced marriage? You'll have to watch
the film for yourselves to find out, my spoiler-seeking friends...!
When
SHACKLE ended, I
scarcely had time to catch my breath before NH10 came
roaring onto the screen. Well, I had time to refill my tea-cup and
snaffle a few more choccie digestives but that was about it. To be
honest, after being so moved by SHACKLE I
wasn't expecting too much from NH10, especially
as I'd heard that the title referred to a road. Yes,
an actual road. The National Highway 10 road, to be precise, all
four-hundred-and-three kilometres of it...
In
actual fact, this film blew me away. It tells the story of Meera and
Arjun, an exceptionally good-looking, affluent thirty-something
couple in modern-day India who find themselves on the road trip from
hell while they're
travelling to a fancy hotel to celebrate Meera's birthday.
Long
story short (well, short-ish),
the couple accidentally get caught up in what is known in India as an
honour killing. The
film itself is loosely based on the real-life Manoj-Babli honour
killing case from 2007, by the way, in which two Indian newly-weds
were killed and their murderers historically convicted.
Meera
and Arjun clash violently with a gang of Indian men who are intent on
killing the sister of one of them and her new husband, simply because
the sister married the wrong person. It's a question of caste,
you see, or whether or not the marriage
conforms to societal norms. The gang leader, Satbir, with the full
blessing and permission of his and his sister's mother, would
apparently rather see his sister dead than married to the wrong
person. Death before dishonour, isn't
that what they say...?
There's
not much I can say about the brilliant NH10 without
spoiling it for those who haven't seen it but let's just say that,
after witnessing an event so shockingly violent it kind of makes that
scene out in the cornfields in the movie CASINO look
like a flippin' christening video, Meera and Arjun find themselves
fleeing for their lives. As they run from the gang and desperately
seek help for their plight from both locals and policemen alike, they
uncover a hidden India of corruption, brutality and fear from which
they'd been completely insulated in their modern lives in the big
city.
There
are some great scenes in it of Meera running away from her would-be
captors. Running, running, always with the running. She's amazingly
attractive, with long glossy black hair and terrific boobs that
bounce mesmerisingly up and down underneath her stripy top while she
jogs along. No wonder the film-makers wrote a 'running' scene into
their movie. Good call, guys, good call. If I may introduce some
tasteless levity into a serious situation, it leaves the
running-along-the-beach scenes in 'Nineties drama serial BAYWATCH
out in the cold. In the middle
of an Arctic blizzard. Starkers. With not even a wise-cracking
dancing penguin for company. That's how good she is at
running-on-camera.
After
both movies had finished, I stumbled out into the Saturday evening
last-of-the-sunlight in a daze, my first ever Indian Film Festival Of
Ireland behind me. I had so much to process and take in that my poor
mind was in turmoil. I spent the whole weekend thinking about the
films. I'm not sure I'll ever stop
thinking about them, they were so powerful and hard-hitting. If you
ever get the chance to watch either of these, for the love of God
just do it. If you can watch both, though, that's even better.
Together, they pack a punch (no pun intended...!) that's pretty much
unforgettable.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based performance poet, novelist, film blogger, sex blogger and short story writer. She has given more than 200 performances of her comedy sex-and-relationship poems in different venues around Dublin, including The Irish Writers’ Centre, The International Bar, Toners’ Pub (Ireland’s Most Literary Pub), the Ha’penny Inn, Le Dernier Paradis at the Trinity Inn and The Strokestown Poetry Festival.
Her articles, short stories and poems have appeared in The Metro-Herald newspaper, Ireland’s Big Issues magazine, The Irish Daily Star, The Irish Daily Sun and The Boyne Berries literary journal. In August 2014, she won the ONE LOVELY BLOG award for her (lovely!) horror film review blog. She is addicted to buying books and has been known to bring home rain-washed tomes she finds on the street and give them a home.
She is the proud possessor of a pair of unfeasibly large bosoms. They have given her- and the people around her- infinite pleasure over the years. She adores the horror genre in all its forms and will swap you anything you like for Hammer Horror or JAWS memorabilia. She would also be a great person to chat to about the differences between the Director’s Cut and the Theatrical Cut of The Wicker Man. You can contact her at:
Great first review, welcome to the team Sandra!
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