[Free Download The Rudaali
Virginie Fayad
Rudaali was a critical and unexpected commercial success. Particular critical praise was directed at Kapadia's performance, with further appreciation of the film's script, music, technical achievements, and Lajmi's direction. The film won three National Film Awards, including Best Actress for Kapadia, and was nominated for three Filmfare Awards, earning Kapadia a Critics Award for Best Performance. Kapadia won Best Actress honours at the 8th Damascus International Film Festival and the 38th Asia-Pacific Film Festival, where Hazarika was awarded for his music. The film was selected as the Indian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 66th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.
Meanwhile, the Thakur's son Lakshman Singh tells her he likes her and hires her as a maid to his wife. In his haveli, Lakshman tries to get Shanichari to assert herself against social customs and encourages her to "look up" into his eyes when speaking to him. One night, after Shanichari sings at the haveli, he gifts her a house of her own, along with two acres of land.
Ganju dies from cholera at a village fair. After curses and threats from the village pundit for not observing the prescribed customs, she takes a loan of 50 rupees to perform the rituals from Ramavatar Singh and becomes a bonded labourer under him.
Some years later, a grown up Budhua brings home Mungri, a prostitute, as his wife. Shanichari attempts to throw her out but relents on learning that she is pregnant with his child. But the snide remarks of the village pundit and shop-owners fuels conflict between the two women and in a fit of rage after a fight, Mungri aborts the child. Budhua leaves home. Shanichari tells Bhikni that none of these bereavements brought her to tears.
One night, Bhikni is called to the neighbouring village by a person named Bhishamdata. Ramavatar Singh dies a few hours later. Shanichari goes to bid farewell to Lakshman Singh, who has plans to leave the village. A messenger brings the news of Bhikni's death from the plague and tells Shanichari that Bhikni was her mother, Peewli. Shanichari then begins to weep profusely, and takes over as the new rudaali, crying at the Thakur's funeral.[2][5]
The film was produced by media mogul Mr. R.V.Pandit, who was also at the time the owner of famous publication house Business Press and also owner of famous magazines like Gladrags. The film is based on Mahashweta Devi's 1979 short story from the book Nairetey Megh.[6] According to author Priya Kapoor, Lajmi's casting of Kapadia, a popular film star, was a strategic choice to cater for an audience not normally drawn to feminist, experimental films like Rudaali.[7] Raakhee was cast in the role of Bhikni.[8] Amjad Khan was cast in the film in one of his final roles, and the film, which released after his death, was dedicated to him in the opening credits.[9] The film was produced by the National Film Development Corporation of India in a process that made Lajmi proclaim she would never again make a film with them.[10] Lajmi said that Kapadia felt exhausted after filming ended.[11]
In an attempt to enhance the film's visual appeal, Lajmi chose to change the setting of the story from Bengal to Rajasthan, where she planned to make use of the desertscape and the grand havelis (mansions).[12] The film was mostly shot on location in the village of Barna, located 40 km from the region of Jaisalmer in western Rajasthan,[13][14] as well as Jaisalmer Fort, Khuri desert, and Kuldhara Ruins.[6] The film's text was spoken in a West Indian dialect, though it was mildly polished for reasons of accessibility to the wider, urban viewers.[6]
The film has music by folk musician Bhupen Hazarika.[9] The soundtrack album released on 18 June 1993 to great success. Business India wrote, "Rudaali is the first genuine crossover album to have negotiated the leap from art to mart, via the listeners' heart.[15]
The song "Dil Hoom Hoom Kare" is based on a previous composition by Hazarika which was used a few decades before in the Assmese film Maniram Dewan (1964) in a song called "Buku Ham Ham Kore". Gulzar, who authored the lyrics for Rudaali, was fond of the Assamese phrase "Ham Ham", used to denote beating of the heart in excitement, and insisted on using it in the Hindi song instead of the regular Hindi alternative "Dhak Dhak".[9]
The film explores themes of caste, class stratification, gender inequality, and poverty, all portrayed through the feudal system and socio-economic marginalisation of poor villagers.[16][6] Film critic Namrata Joshi says the film "placed the issue of gender and patriarchy in the broader context of class and caste divides".[17] Sumita S. Chakravarty described it as "a film that wishes to evoke subaltern ethos".[18] Radha Subramanyam wrote that the film "explores the many levels of oppression to which the lower-caste, impoverished female is subject". She notes the film's combinatory style as it "draws on the two strains of filmmaking extant in India; it combines the social concerns of the 'art' cinema with elements of the mass appeal of Bombay films".[19] In the book India Transitions: Culture and Society during Contemporary Viral Times, Priya Kapoor calls it "a feminist treatise on solidarity against caste ostracization and the plight of the subaltern woman at the hands of landowning classes".[20] She further argued that the film came at a time when "caste and class politics have seen a disturbing resurgence in Indian politics and civilian life".[21] In another book, Intercultural Communication and Creative Practice: Music, Dance, and Women's Cultural Identity, Kapoor wrote that "Rudaali offers a chance to examine a rural community, colonial and feudal, bound by its caste location".[22]
The film's script had several diversions from the original story by Devi, including its setting and the focus of the story on the individual story, as well as the romantic tension between Shanichari and the landlord, an original addition to the film.[16] Shoma Chatterji argues that the film is so distant from its original source that those who have read it might be disappointed by the film. She added that those unfamiliar with Devi or the original story might watch Rudaali independently of its literary source. According to Chatterji, the film romanticises the tragic story of Sachichari.[23] Scholar Tutun Mukherjee wrote of the attraction that develops between Shanichari and the local landlord played by Raj Babbar and posited that given the cultural and social setting of the film, it could only take one form: "It is obvious to both that despite the romance, no relationship other than the exploitative one of the rich over poor and of man over woman can ever be allowed to develop between them."[24]
The character of Shanichari has been discussed by several writers. Author Chandra Bhushan wrote, "Shanichari is dry like a desert but even she has a flavour, affection and audacity and courage to reject the enticement of Zamindar (the landlord)."[25] According to the book Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change, Shanichari is described as "highly vulnerable to all sorts of oppressions. She resists many of them, but succumbs to the dominant discourses".[26] Reetamoni Das and Debarshi Prasad Nath, film scholars, describe Shanichari as one woman who manages to survive through her harsh realities despite the absence of a man through most of her life.[16] They further describe her as a woman who "writes her own history" as she "neither conforms to the societal constructions of the gender nor the hierarchical communal life".[16] In the view of Shreerekha Subramanian, the character of Shanichari is an embodiment of the Hindu goddess Sita or her mother Bhumi who suffer at the hands of men.[27]
The portrayal of the women of the higher caste has been discussed by Das and Nath, who claim that in Devi's story they are very much similar to their privileged male counterparts in terms of "their vanity, sham and upholding their class status", while in the film, their luxurious lifestyle and high socio-economic status notwithstanding, they are still lesser than the men in their environment and in this sense these women are not more privileged than women like Shanichari.[16] Moreover, the authors note the film's atypical portrayal of women through Shanichari's inability to cry, positioning the film as an "antithesis to the popular belief that a woman is a storehouse for tears".[16] Pillai Tripthi took note of the film's adoption into the Bollywood format "by turning the public mourning rituals into mellifluous musical performances". Tripthi made comparisons between Rudaali and Hamlet, drawing an analogy between Ophelia and Gertrude with Shanichari and Bhikni.[3]
Rudaali was popular with critics and the moviegoing public.[24] The film's unexpected success at the box office was attributed by author Sumita S. Chakravarty to its "ambivalent self-positioning" between mainstream and art cinema. According to Chakravarty, the lack of commercial success attained by India's alternative cinema had been due to its "shunning of the melodramatic elements of songs and emotionality, its gritty social realism", which Rudaali embraced altogether.[28]
Chidananda Dasgupta from Cinemaya noted Kapadia's performance in this film relies on both her prior experience of mainstream cinema conventions as well as her acting prowess which allows her to create a real person, believing these two elements help her make Shanichari "both larger than life and believable". Dasgupta took note of the story and Lajmi's direction as having contributed to this and added, "Together, director and actress succeed in making a mix of melodrama and realism that works". He wrote of Lajmi that "Here in the deserts of Rajasthan with the muted colours of nature and the brilliance of the costumes, she is in her element." He concluded, "To repeat Rudali's razor's edge walk between realism and melodrama may not be easy."[29] Film scholar Tutun Mukherjee described Rudaali as "cinematically appealing and spectacular woman-oriented Hindi film" and praised its quality and production values to be "superior to the usual run-of-mill Hindi formula films".[24]
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