Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Bandit Queen

Timestamp:

Jul 2, 2012, 6:22:29 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Bandit Queen

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+'''Bandit Queen'''''''
+
+
+1994 119’ col Hindi
+d Shekar Kapur p Ka-lei-doscope (India),
+Channel Four Films (London) sc Mala Sen from
+her biography of Phoolan Devi dial Ranjit
+Kapoor c Ashok Mehta, Giles Nuttgens
+m Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, M. Arshad
+lp Seema Biswas, Nirmal Pandey, Manoj Bajpai,
+Rajesh Vivek, Govind Namdeo, Saurabh
+Shukla, Raghuvir Yadav, Sunita Bhatt
+
+
+The harrowing although in the end heroic story
+of Phoolan Devi, previously filmed in the form
+of a Hindi musical (Phoolan Devi, 1984), is
+represented by Kapur in an intensely emotional
+movie drawing on a wide variety of generic
+elements ranging from socialist realist
+posturing via action movies to lyrical and, at
+crucial moments, impressively reserved and
+elliptical scenes more commonly associated
+with the art cinema. The story starts with the
+young village girl (Bhatt), still a child, being
+sold by her impoverished parents as a bride.
+The ensuing rape of the child on her ‘wedding
+day’, conveyed by an agonised scream, sets the
+tone for much of what follows. The heroine
+(Biswas) grows up under a regime of caste
+banditry and terrorism, exercised mainly by the
+local thakurs, backed up by police terrorism,
+both involving the most brutish forms of sexual
+terrorism as one gang rape (by the police who
+arrested her for running away from a childmolesting
+husband) is followed by another
+perpetrated by the thakurs which lasts for three
+days and is conveyed by way of a relentlessly
+opening barn door as the upper-caste villains
+file in, including a symbolic rape by an entire
+village community who force her to strip naked
+in the village square. However, instead of
+allowing her cold fury to destroy herself, the
+heroine teams up with an outlaw gang and
+wreaks bloody revenge on her persecutors.
+Chased by the police, she evades capture long
+enough for the news of her exploits and ordeal
+to spark a nationwide interest in her fate,
+making it difficult for the local representatives
+of power simply to kill her off. Political
+expediency requires the government to
+negotiate with her and she eventually
+surrenders at a public ceremony to which
+masses of people flocked from far and wide.
+She is applauded by the assembled people,
+suggesting her rebellion found a deep echo in
+a population exploited and terrorised by the
+politically powerful thakur caste in that region.
+Predictably, the film became controversial, a
+phenomenon acquiring additional complexity
+when Phoolan Devi, released, remarried and
+harbouring political ambitions but still liable to
+prosecution for murder should the authorities
+decide to press the matter, repudiated the film.
+The newcomer Seema Biswas gives a
+performance of great intensity and conviction
+in the lead role.
+
+[[Film]]