Haq: A Persuasive Take On The Shah Bano Case |
Haq, designed as one woman’s battle against the system, underlines the patriarchal readings of the Quran, the redundancy of triple talaq, and how women are forced to bear the brunt of religion, writes Ishita Sengupta.
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| | | Cast: Yami Gautam Dhar, Emraan Hashmi, Danish Hussain | | | |
HAQ becomes a better film once it ends. The Suparn Verma directorial feature is based on the landmark 1985 Shah Bano case, where a Muslim woman won her right to alimony. Although personal, her fight assumed big proportions because it revealed the knotty relationship between Muslim Personal Law, where a husband is entitled to provide maintenance during the iddat period after divorce, and the Indian secular law. In this particular case, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Bano; later, the then-Congress government offset the judgment by sanctioning women to receive “reasonable and fair provision and maintenance” for three months after the divorce; Haq concludes by mentioning this, applauding, in the same breath, the current government for criminalising triple talaq and passing the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019. Those familiar with the Hindi cinema landscape of late would know most films originate from such black slates. Narratives have come to be reverse-engineered to align with a certain leaning, and everything else is decided later. Haq’s clear acknowledgement fuels suspicion, but in hindsight, it merits the film because, if advocacy was indeed the intent, things could have gone gravely wrong. It doesn’t. The result is an outing that opts for reductive accessibility over complexity. Though the vantage point is that of a majoritarian, it doesn't entirely shortchange the minorities — “entirely” being the operative word. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! |
| | Frankenstein: Guillermo del Toro Trades Godliness For Cleanliness |
Guillermo del Toro’s geeky love for the wildness and wilderness of storytelling is not as unkempt anymore. There’s a sense of studio-ness about the ingenuity in Frankenstein that’s hard to shake off.
Rahul Desai reviews.
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| | | Cast: Oscar Issac, Jacob Elordi, Christopher Waltz, Mia Goth | | | | AT ITS BEST, a Guillermo del Toro fantasy is a Tim Burton fable without kooky muscle relaxants. There were times in del Toro’s latest, Frankenstein, when I was reminded of Burton’s greatest, Edward Scissorhands. The first five minutes of that film — where an ‘unfinished’ pale-faced humanoid is lost and lonely after his eccentric old inventor dies — distilled the essence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel into a gothic satire on suburban America. There were times in del Toro’s film when I was reminded of his own deliciously twisted and darkly romantic Crimson Peak, a nightmarish fairytale that not enough people speak of. There were times I was reminded of Poor Things. There were times I was reminded of Nosferatu, The Shape of Water and King Kong, even. Basically, Frankenstein is reminiscent of every Frankenstein-coded fiction except itself. It isn’t the first time del Toro’s made a movie so clinically dreamy that it’s consumed by its own reflection. There’s a lyrical hollowness about it that makes the adaptation look like a digital projection of a heartbeat. It’s hard to imagine how the director doesn’t imagine hard enough. The film is almost dull in its pursuit of staying wide-eyed and faithful — it’s a cinephile’s showy tribute rather than a creator’s risky concoction. It stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, the narcissistic and arrogant surgeon who becomes a ‘monster’ of his own father’s making. After his beloved and not-at-all-oedipal-tension-infused mother dies while giving birth to his younger brother, Victor resents his cold doctor-father for not saving her and, as a reaction, decides to drag science into the realms of divinity himself. He is rejected from medical school after reanimating a corpse and defying the biblical certainty of death. Once a wealthy arms dealer named Harlander (a predictable Christoph Waltz) funds his mad-scientist mission, Victor’s gory quest is peppered with an infatuation — he falls for his brother William’s fiancée, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), a spitting image of their late mother. Yet, despite his entitlement, he succeeds — except the strangely dashing Creature soon attracts the attention of Elizabeth, posing a threat to Victor’s masculinity and mayhem. |
| | The Girlfriend: A Sensitive Take On Toxic Relationships
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Rahul Ravindran's The Girlfriend is like the antidote to Arjun Reddy. It is the balm many young women need, it is a film telling them it sees them, and understands where they come from, Subha J Rao writes.
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| | | Cast: Rashmika Mandanna, Dheekshith Shetty, Rao Ramesh | | | | CERTAIN PHRASES are difficult to showcase visually. I can immediately think of two — ‘When the walls are closing in’ and ‘Iron grip’. But after watching Rahul Ravindran’s searing, slow-burn The Girlfriend, I know it is possible. Rahul effortlessly manages to do that with the help of his tech team and fabulous lead actors — look out for the one where Bhooma (chef’s kiss for Rashmika Mandanna) feels suffocated and rushes into a room, turns the tap on, and panics when she literally feels a square room turn into a narrow rectangle; and all the scenes where Vikram (an excellent Dheekshith Shetty makes you loathe him with every fibre) throws his arm around Bhooma and pulls her in. Films about toxic relationships are common, but those done right are very very rare — in recent times, I can think of the Tamil Lover, and then this. There’s, after all, a very thin line between intense love and one that veers around possessiveness and control. The biggest reasons why The Girlfriend works are the writing that never strays from its intent, lead cast, cinematographer Krishnan Vasant, editor Chota K Prasad, composer Hesham Abdul Wahab and Prashanth R Vihar’s haunting, aching background score. If any of them had missed the brief even by a small margin, this would not have been the film we got. |
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| Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. |
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