Bandini (The Female Prisoner, Hindi; 1963)
This must surely be one of the early female-centric Hindi movies with Nutan taking the leading role. It is a subtle movie without the overt melodrama usually associated with Bollywood films. The black and white print set the tone for sombre nature of the subject the story is trying to tell.
Set in the 1930s Bengal, at the height of Independence movement, Kalyani (Nutan), a poem loving lass with a sad life in her past, losing her brother and mother, falls in love with a freedom fighter, Bikash. He promises to return to marry her but never does. Unable to tolerate the vicious bad mouthing of the villagers, she leaves home.
She eventually works a nurse to care for a very demanding mentally disturbed patient who happens to be Bikash's wife. In the fit of rage, Kalyani poisons her and is imprisoned.
It is at the prison that the movie actually starts and the rest are told in flashbacks. The prison doctor (Dharmendra) falls in love with her. Kalyani's dilemma here is two-fold. First, in the prison, it is whether a tainted person like her is good enough a match for an honourable doctor. Next, when she realises that Bikash was put in a spot to marry his wife and that he is indeed quite sick, she has to make a decision whether to start a new life for herself or to sacrifice it to serve the one she had hopelessly surrendered her heart and soul.
At the end of the day, (spoiler alert), the dictum, one man to one woman till death do them apart, prevail. It could have been a feminist or women-empowerment movie but to keep with the sensitivities of the time and to preserve what is expected of an Indian wife, she pushes aside her desires to be the self-sacrificing subservient that the member of the fairer sex is expected to do!
The question now is whether the adage, one man to one woman, still holds true even if the other party does not hold to the promise. In this self-centred society, is it alright to put aside all empathy and duties as one holds the duty to take care of himself before surrendering his whole life to some else just because at one time in their life, a promise was made? Unlike the thinking in the modern living, traditional matrimonial bonds are made in the witness of the elements of Nature and are held in the premise that only Nature can make or break these nuptial bonds!
This must surely be one of the early female-centric Hindi movies with Nutan taking the leading role. It is a subtle movie without the overt melodrama usually associated with Bollywood films. The black and white print set the tone for sombre nature of the subject the story is trying to tell.Set in the 1930s Bengal, at the height of Independence movement, Kalyani (Nutan), a poem loving lass with a sad life in her past, losing her brother and mother, falls in love with a freedom fighter, Bikash. He promises to return to marry her but never does. Unable to tolerate the vicious bad mouthing of the villagers, she leaves home.
She eventually works a nurse to care for a very demanding mentally disturbed patient who happens to be Bikash's wife. In the fit of rage, Kalyani poisons her and is imprisoned.
It is at the prison that the movie actually starts and the rest are told in flashbacks. The prison doctor (Dharmendra) falls in love with her. Kalyani's dilemma here is two-fold. First, in the prison, it is whether a tainted person like her is good enough a match for an honourable doctor. Next, when she realises that Bikash was put in a spot to marry his wife and that he is indeed quite sick, she has to make a decision whether to start a new life for herself or to sacrifice it to serve the one she had hopelessly surrendered her heart and soul.
At the end of the day, (spoiler alert), the dictum, one man to one woman till death do them apart, prevail. It could have been a feminist or women-empowerment movie but to keep with the sensitivities of the time and to preserve what is expected of an Indian wife, she pushes aside her desires to be the self-sacrificing subservient that the member of the fairer sex is expected to do!
The question now is whether the adage, one man to one woman, still holds true even if the other party does not hold to the promise. In this self-centred society, is it alright to put aside all empathy and duties as one holds the duty to take care of himself before surrendering his whole life to some else just because at one time in their life, a promise was made? Unlike the thinking in the modern living, traditional matrimonial bonds are made in the witness of the elements of Nature and are held in the premise that only Nature can make or break these nuptial bonds!
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