The dialogue is in keeping with the realism of the film. "I'm becoming child-like: I tend to say out loud whatever I feel, which was not the case earlier."Ī scene from the filmKapur made the actors spend a night in the ravines to get a feel of the place, and made them shout obscenities at one another to help them get over any hangups they may have had. The screams give way to tears, and Phoolan collapses on the ground, sobbing desperately.īiswas, who reads the entire film script every day to ready herself for the role and who has more or less secluded herself from the unit to bring an intensity to her performance, feels a change happening within herself. The two start off playfully but then, all of a sudden, Phoolan turns violent - the way Mallah puts his hand on her face reminds her of the rape. (Phoolan was married off to a man 20 years older than herself, who eventually brought a second wife.) "Whenever she tried to be happy, something or the other would happen," she says.Īs an example, the actress cites a love-making scene in the film between Phoolan and her lover, Vikram Mallah.
"I'm not saying that she is innocent - that is for the viewers and the courts to decide."īiswas feels that Phoolan never grew up because her very childhood was taken away from her. "I see a great deal of innocence behind all her actions," says Kapur. I've got to delve into my own consciousness to find the reasons for her actions."Īs Kapur and Biswas search within themselves, a common perspective has begun to emerge: both believe that essentially Phoolan's was a case of lost childhood. "And the process is filling me with venom and turmoil - I don't know how a girl who was raped at the age of 11 feels. "I'm still trying to understand her," he says. 8.5/10.Turning his back on the deadline, Kapur talks about his interpretation of Phoolan Devi's life. If a movie manages to work both as an adventurous spectacle and a tale of resurgence after national injustice and misfortunes, then it deserves to be seen. How honest Kapur's original intentions were we can't know for sure, but that doesn't undermine his accomplishment here this is a story that had to be told to a larger international audience. Kapur might have been a high-caste, city-bred man trying to portray the life of a brave and rebellious low-caste woman fighting for her survival - in a way that no other woman in her time had done, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know or doesn't have the right to try to depict this reality he doesn't directly belong to. Truth be told, this is one of those extraordinary sagas that if even half of what's portrayed on screen is real, it's already quite a journey.
THE BANDIT QUEEN MOVIE ONLINE HOW TO
Just like he would do in 1998's successful "Elizabeth", Shekhar Kapur knows how to turn a larger than life, actual trajectory in a huge spectacle - but still keeping the essence of its core.
A lot has been said about the accuracy of everything portrayed on screen ("My life was much harder", Devi would have said after the first time she saw the movie). Although at first Devi took legal action to ban the movie's exhibition in India (and it was actually banned for some time - after all, this is no Bollywood fantasy), she eventually changed her mind (plus, Channel Four paid her $60,000.). Devi became a mythical national figure in her own lifetime (she had just been released from an 11-year prison term when the movie came out, and was murdered in 2001), hailed as "The Bandit Queen" or "Queen of the Ravines". "Bandit Queen" is a controversial and groundbreaking Indian film (co-produced by Great Britain's "Channel Four") telling the real-life story of Phoolan Devi (Seema Biswas, excellent), a low-caste woman given to a husband at age 11 who runs away from him, is constantly violated by upper-caste males, until pairing with a handsome outlaw, Vikram Mallah (Nirmal Pandey), who shows her some respect and invites her to join his gang.
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