Pink Movie Review: Bachchan and his girls give us hope with this flawless film

Do you have the guts to provoke yourself to think? Well, be forewarned because Pink does just that. It isn’t a film for the feeble hearted; it stirs, moves and shakes you up with a jolt. With the progressive technology, a large part of the country still suffers from a primitive mindset where there are different rules for the two genders. Men are the privileged lot. As men, we take it for granted that there only two kinds of women – the one we can score easily and the ones who tease us and play hard to get. The women are well aware of this mentality and yet dodge it because that’s what the society has conditioned them to do. In between the progressive and primitive worlds, lie today’s times, at the cusp of an explosion and still bogged down by the shackles of morality.

Crude, prude and all of that, Pink makes you want to think where have we gone wrong as a society. It is a social thriller that has some deep, impactful messages in the story but director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury refrains from giving us a crash course in aggressive feminism. For more reasons than one, we would dare to call this movie the year’s best so far. Amongst the plenty theories as to why Pink fares well on our scorecard, our reason will be simple – its sensitive portrayal of an incident whose gruesomeness is never shoved in our faces. The story unravels gradually creating a familiar milieu with strikingly palpable characters and relatable setup. Three middle-class women share an apartment in Delhi; good jobs are on their side and they return home to seemingly posh apartments. They are making enough to make ends meet and fare a tad better than that. But life goes topsy-turvy when a fun night turns into a horror show. After a bunch of rich brats get physically abusive the girls, they react, one of them more brutally than others. There is an accident that ends in bloodshed and soon after, harassment ensues. The boys follow them around with a vengeance till she is compelled to lodge a complaint. Now in India, is it difficult to prove that single girl who lives alone, loves her independence, fancies a drink once in a while, wears short clothes and has a mind of her own is loose on her morals. Of course, she deserved to be molested, didn’t she?

The girl isn’t the one to give up easy. She musters the courage to get a senile lawyer to fight her case and prove to the world that a modern woman can have her own ideas about love, life and sexuality but that gives nobody the authority to slander her character.

But that’s not where it stops. Shoojit’s mentoring helps layer the film with sharp nuances. There is a beautiful commentary of how North East, which comprises of seven states is still looked upon as an amorphous mass. The chinkis (banned by law) can be called names, treated with zero respect and that’s apparently fine. In a country where rape cases are more rampant by the day, Shoojit and Aniruddha take us through the dynamics of consent. There is a strange hypocrisy at play with that. It is apparently necessary to get a lady’s nod but a sex worker’s ‘yes’ isn’t a concern because sex is up for sale on her bed. High time, people understand a no means a clear no.

Amidst talk of virginity and sexual modesty and all that falls under the purview of the subject, the director takes us through the lives of three harrowed women who have been shamed for their life choices and smirked upon for saying no to the inappropriate advances of men. The brash pricks have the nosy society and its outdated rules on their side but Shoojit-Aniruddha never lose sight of utopia. This hard hitting story is rooted deeply in the sharp observations of our day to day lives that the actors beautifully bring to the screen.

Amitabh Bachchan leads the pack, with his fine portrayal of a lawyer; using his deep baritone to further the impact of his script. Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang are fascinating. Yes, those girls could be in my family or be my friends. They sell the story to you as your own.

It is a riveting courtroom drama that makes you want to stop blinking so as to not miss even a moment. We all are familiar with the incidents that could’ve triggered the story but Pink is a film that will be memorable for the impact it creates. Are women equal? Not even close but there is hope for change. Let’s make a beginning.

We rate this film an 80% on the Pinkvilla Movie Meter.