.::Immediately captivating cinema!::. Review on Pinjar

Bollywood’s celluloid has always been near-defunct in portraying Indian partition of 1947. Screenplays written with masses in mind, escapism in thoughts. Protagonists shrieking their lungs away, killings just as loud and tasteful as fireworks, dialogues made criminally satisfying by induced community-mudslinging. And the whole ugly epoch thus, settles down to pointed nibs of pen scribbling their way on thousands of yards of paper, thanks to forever shrinking and strangling boundaries of the silver screen and masses expectations. Moments when pages were interpreted on screen, controversies stamped and crushed their lives out. But even in such a limited scenario, a film like Pinjar, in my humble opinion, rules.

Pinjar is a real tale set in an affluent, felicitous Sikh household commencing in late 1946 when the eldest daughter of the house, Puro (Urmila) is to be wed-locked in a nearby village. To assist in this alliance, and also in the mother’s accouchement, the family shifts to this village soon enough. But a crueller fate awaits Puro as she is abducted by a local Muslim lad, Rashid (Manoj Bajpai). Soon realisation dawns upon her that in a society which is ruled by rotten laws and religion, she has been completely disconnected by her kinfolk. Wretched and glowering, she returns to Rashid only to be married and re-named. From then on, starts Puro’s journey as Hamida. How with Rashid, she struggles with ubiquitous fundamentalism, communism, and dominatingly through the dark and humongous period of Partition completes the bold circumference of the rest of Pinjar.

Pinjar, when rendered in English, plainly means a skeleton. Its predominantly about the fragile status of women in the yore. Its about a period when hollow male-perpetrated, hot-blooded revenges for ancestral enmities find their beastly terminations in the womanhood, and when dissolved with copious amount of false ideologies germinating under the umbrella of religion completely alter (or worse still, shatter) the very name, the very identity of a woman, reducing her to nothing but a moving skeleton. This exactly is our protagonist, Puro’s journey. Her journey as a Pinjar. How she lives like one, slowly adapts to it and rejuvenates two others in the process is to be seen to be believed.

Adapted from Amrita Pritam’s prose also christened as Pinjar, the film’s departure from period films is visible from the very first shot. Most of which is conveyed by its unmistakable feminine touch which instantly bestows a more sentimental, a more homely, a more comfortable, humane feel. The womanly spirit streams throughout as the film keeps unfolding through Puro’s eyes. And from this very spirit, extracts yet another deviation—of torture of women before and after Partition, which has never been visited with such excruciating detail.

Pinjar very vividly illustrates the disturbed psychological state a woman seeps into, when abducted, removed from her family and made a slave in her own evacuated, ransacked house. Almost commendable is the way in which this abduction of the meek women and their acceptance by their kinsfolk is contrasted before and after Partition. Puro’s thrown off and rejected after her abduction (before Partition), yet her sister-in-law, Laajo is accepted since it’s a mass-animation after Partition, which in itself speaks volumes of that era when fanatic beliefs and laws ruled over emotions, decisions and most importantly, women.

Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s screenplay and direction brilliantly envelopes the simplicity of the 1940s (when “bijli ke laatoos” was determiner of a family’s wealth, when girls got smacked for talking openly to their soon-to-be-husbands) and is also successful in canning some riveting scenes. Like the one where Puro escapes from the cage of Rashid and begs to be accepted by her parents but is thrown off (her deplorable state brings a lump to the throat). Then the one where Puro gasps with pain as her new Muslim name is incised on her forearm and the industrious way in which she rubs her arm with a stone was wonderfully suggestive of her tempestuous soul unwilling to accept her new life, her new identity.

The scenes where she intentionally slogs herself knowing that she’s bearing a child, the subsequent haemorrhage and the birth of a dead child as well as the scooping of a new-born baby from the womb of a dead lunatic woman also sends shivers. Preponderantly, it’s the flawlessly directed climax and the preceding sequence where Puro and Rashid save Laajo (watch the melodrama reaching its peak as Laajo hugs Puro and refuses to let go—that yearn for freedom is brilliantly depicted) which gives a thoroughly captivating, edge-of-the-seat curve to the flick confirming the director’s taut control over the medium.

Of course, it all wouldn’t have been quarterly as effective without the splendid performances from the hand-picked cast. Matondkar looks and feels every bit as rustic, as naïve, and just as lovable as Puro could be. Essaying the principal character which dips and surfaces, re-dips and resurfaces with revisions and transmogrifications in fluid continuum, she swims through all of it with shocking ease. Though once or twice its felt that her face struggled to keep up with the intensity of her flawless dialogue-delivery, Urmila practically brings the house down with a riveting portrayal of a beetel-chewing Muslim rug-seller towards the climax. Her scenes where she’s abducted, where she escapes, where she redeems the life of Laajo and evidently the climax where her eyes search for Rashid are nauseatingly emotional.

In Bajpai (as Rashid), the film sees its most composite character, which Bajpai’s restrained performance does ample justice. Composite as he’s the one who’s ruthlessly caged Puro thus implementing the evil plans of his elders, but he’s also the one who dearly loves her. How, through his brooding, yearning lovelorn eyes, he awaits acknowledgement from Puro throughout the film only to find solace in the climax is one of the high points of the film.

Sandali Sinha’s portrayal of Laajo who’s yet another victim (Pinjar) is sure to melt even the stone-hearted. The actress knows her strength is in her expressive eyes, and use them unceasingly to express numbness, pain, resentment and love. Through Priyanshu and Sanjay Suri, the film glimpses at the dynamic and learned youth of the 1940s, and though the latter impresses with his dedicated lover part, it’s the former that surprises with his subtle portrayal of a brother in search of his trapped sister. The supporting cast (Seema Biswas- as the lunatic woman who’s raped and dies with a child waiting to be lifted out, Isha Koppikar, Lillete Dubey, Kulbhushan, Farida Jalal and Alok Nath) are efficient with a capital E.

Almost unmistakable is the rural, bucolic Punjabi flavour of Uttam Singh’s music and background score accentuated by singers like Preeti Uttam and Jaspinder Narula and lyrics by Gulzar. Be it the playfulness of “Maar Udaari”, the haunting sentiment of “Charkhaa Chalaati Maa”, the festivity of “Choodiyon Ki Tokri” or the sheer lyrical value of “Watna We”, every ditty comes packed with its own charm. The background is laced with snippets of poetry (as narration) from Gulzar, marvellous renditions of choirs, and some truly emotional extensions of the song “Charkhaa Chalaati Maa.”

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