Paheli - Spoiler thread

[Nina]

I wouldn't make too much of the fact that both stories deal with the woman's power of control, either, because that is very often the central issue in both folktales (as in Paheli) and in subaltern history (as in Martin Guerre), i.e., the history of the not-rich-and-powerful. Both are about the ways that the oppressed/disregarded gain power or manipulate their circumstances in opposition to the official, usually patriarchal norms of society, whether in fantasy (folktales) or real life (weird historical incidents that no-one paid any attention to until the 1990s).

Yes, exactly.  I would want to make an issue of how both stories deal with women's control, because that is just the kind of comparison I would like to draw out, and which you phrased so well.  Thank you.

Everybody loves a story about the little guy getting one up on the system, yet stories focusing on female agency along this plot line are (seems to me) still pretty rare, and usually in imagined circumstances which are a projection of desired outcome, as in Paheli and other folk tales round the world.  There seems to me to be a demographic imbalance in that.

[Dil Bert]

Everybody loves a story about the little guy getting one up on the system, yet stories focusing on female agency along this plot line are (seems to me) still pretty rare, and usually in imagined circumstances which are a projection of desired outcome, as in Paheli and other folk tales round the world.  There seems to me to be a demographic imbalance in that.

Empowered women stories are not rare in other parts of Asia, but fortunately Paheli's twisted version of it is.

[lena]

Yes, exactly.  I would want to make an issue of how both stories deal with women's control, because that is just the kind of comparison I would like to draw out, and which you phrased so well.  Thank you.

Everybody loves a story about the little guy getting one up on the system, yet stories focusing on female agency along this plot line are (seems to me) still pretty rare, and usually in imagined circumstances which are a projection of desired outcome, as in Paheli and other folk tales round the world.  There seems to me to be a demographic imbalance in that.

The thing is, you rarely find real-life stories of female agency because the people keeping track of these things have rarely paid attention to them or written them down; as Dil Bert mentions, however, folklore is full of stories of female agency, and not just in Asia. Because folk lore is where women more often get to tell the stories.

[Dil Bert]

The thing is, you rarely find real-life stories of female agency because the people keeping track of these things have rarely paid attention to them or written them down [...]

Or perhaps they really were rare. 

[...]as Dil Bert mentions, however, folklore is full of stories of female agency, and not just in Asia.

In other parts of Asia it's not just folklore (such as possibly Mulan).  One of the most popular martial arts was invented by a woman.  Films with powerful female characters go back before the 1960's and continue through today. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Prince
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gZlAux75TU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_with_guns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_opera_blues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtkqjso6F-c

So, I find Paheli is pathetic as a story of female empowerment. 

[etu]

So, I find Paheli is pathetic as a story of female empowerment. 

You've certainly got a point there.

Must female empowerment mean dominating men (with guns, if needed)? Or could it be as simple as reaching something like equity or even just being understood?

[carla]

You've certainly got a point there.

Must female empowerment mean dominating men (with guns, if needed)? Or could it be as simple as reaching something like equity or even just being understood?

Or even just having the opportunity to make a choice. 

[Dil Bert]

Must female empowerment mean dominating men (with guns, if needed)? Or could it be as simple as reaching something like equity or even just being understood?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Prince
As far as I could tell, the couple in Paheli were as equal as would be expected at the time, as previously discussed.

Or even just having the opportunity to make a choice.

Great, choose to go to her husband or run off with the ghost.  Or turn the ghost down and stay with the family that is supporting her.  Something, anything other than stay with the family and the ghost while the ghost tears up the husband's letters.  What's wrong with a little responsibility coming with her rights?

[smithie09]

Great, choose to go to her husband or run off with the ghost.  Or turn the ghost down and stay with the family that is supporting her.  Something, anything other than stay with the family and the ghost while the ghost tears up the husband's letters.  What's wrong with a little responsibility coming with her rights?

Haha...not a fan of the adultery Dil???  I always assumed that the marriage was invalid (at least religiously) because it was never consummated.  Now that I think about it though, that's rather Euro-centric of me...do/did Indian weddings carry that same clause?

[carla]

Great, choose to go to her husband or run off with the ghost.  Or turn the ghost down and stay with the family that is supporting her.  Something, anything other than stay with the family and the ghost while the ghost tears up the husband's letters.  What's wrong with a little responsibility coming with her rights?

I jumped into this discussion at a bad point, and didn't make myself clear. 

I'm not taking a position on whether Paheli is about female empowerment or not; I just saw it a couple of nights ago for the first time, and I haven't yet come to terms with the implications of the tale.  All I was saying is that I agreed with etu that stories of female empowerment need not be of the chicks-with-guns variety, and wanted to augment her list with one very important kind of empowerment that she omitted.

As to Paheli, Rani's character did make a choice, and it was remarkable to me to see a movie in which a woman makes such a choice and is not punished for it - she actually survives the movie.  This is even more remarkable where the choice is quite arguably a wrong choice, as you point out.  Paheli, though, is not a morality tale, and it's not presented as one.  It's a story in whose heroes do something very naughty and get away with it.

[Dil Bert]

It's a story in whose heroes do something very naughty and get away with it.

Or more accurately, the protagonists of the story do something very bad and get away with it.  Depending on how you read it, it's 5 years of adultery, theft, and psychological torture of the husband topped off with his murder.

[carla]

Leaving aside for a moment the issues Dil Bert raises, I would like to go on the record and say how much I enjoyed watching this movie.      I didn't know how it would end while I was watching it, and that was definitely part of my enjoyment of it - I had no idea who would live or die, whether there would be punishment, what kind of story we were really seeing.  I just had no idea and I was enthralled in the waiting.

And, there was plenty to do while waiting.  The visuals were unbelievably delicious - Devdas came to mind as I was watching, as a point of negative contrast.  I was thinking, THIS what sumptuously colorful visuals are, not the poorly lit, faux-stained-glass primary color excess of Devdas.  Paheli made Devdas look like a cheap whore.

And now to the stars.  I've always been a big fan of Rani Mukherjee - no surprises here - but I absolutely loved Shah Rukh Khan in this role - these roles, really.  It was a treat to see him play two such different characters, with such palpable contrast, and especially so given that neither of them was that irritating arrogant snot he so frequently plays.  That's not to say that the ghost didn't have a touch of arrogance about him, but even so managed to shed that obnoxious je ne sais quoi that makes Shah Rukh Khan, in most romantic roles, so terribly unappealing to me.  Paheli was one of those rare roles in which Shah Rukh Khan the Superstar (TM) did not overwhelm the actor; his charm was actually charming and his appeal appealing.  Kudos to him, and to Amol Palekar for reining him in. 

A note on costumes - with the fairy-tale setting of an unspecified place and time, I have no idea how true to Rajasthani rural aristocracy the costumes were.  but I did find the modern hairstyles on Shah Rukh Khan (and on Suniel Shetty, for that matter) to be very jarring.  Shah Rukh's standard issue gelled-up turn-of-the-millenium pin-up coiffe was terribly at odds with the silken suits and the natty little mustache.  I would have loved to have seen him shed that last vestige of Shah Rukh Khan the Superstar (TM) and adopt a more traditional look from the nose up, too.    I found it distracting - but this is a tiny, tiny nit. 

I'll think more about the substance of the film later; the ending really slapped me out of my stupor a little, because I had so enjoyed the previous two hours - I did want to get that enjoyment on the record. 

 

[James]

Or more accurately, the protagonists of the story do something very bad and get away with it.  Depending on how you read it, it's 5 years of adultery, theft, and psychological torture of the husband topped off with his murder.

It can't be theft because a woman of Lachchi's stature would have come with such a dowry that she could have easily afforded to feed herself for life based on what her family gave for her alone (indeed, that was the purpose of dowry- to support the woman in the event of her husband's death).  In Hinduism (particularly the north Indian variant here), there is no such thing as divorce- marriage is a sacrament that lasts for seven life times.  Rani's character had no way of formally breaking with her marriage in the eyes of the society in which she lived.  So to call her decision to be with another adultery because she failed to formally break off the marriage is to expect the impossible considering the context in which she lived. 

I wouldn't call Lachchi's being with another man psychological torture when her husband didn't know about it, though certainly it was very distressing when he found out.  As far as his 'death' or possession is concerned, it is very brutal and dark, but that's the sort of thing folk tales are made of.  To complain of that is like complaining there was too much love in a love story.  It's just the genre.

[Dil Bert]

James, thanks for that info about dowry.

If Lachchi and the ghost had gone on the run, the husband's letters would have been received (and presumably answered).  The denial of that communication is what I meant by psychological torture.

As far as his 'death' or possession is concerned, it is very brutal and dark, but that's the sort of thing folk tales are made of.  To complain of that is like complaining there was too much love in a love story.  It's just the genre.

I'm more complaining about the denial/revisionist interpretation of the death/possession.  The death works in the context of a folk tale, but if it's a tale of female empowerment, shouldn't any punishments for "wrongs" be fitting, not completely out of proportion?

[Darshana]

I agree totally with James about folk/fairy tales.  They are "just so" stories -- "and so the hunter cut the boy's heart out," etc.

They're not morality tales -- they usually have a point, but the point isn't the kind of point made by the parables of Jesus or the stories in the Ramayana.  The point isn't about how to be good, virtuous, close to God, and it's not the (related) kind of point about how to manifest the virtues of a particular culture (honor your marriage vows, do the right thing even if it involves sacrifice, whatever).

I would be inclined to think that one point of this one is, a husband who puts his obedience to his parents ahead of his wife's needs and his own normal instincts is likely to lose his power in his household, if not his wife, and maybe his identity.  

Which would be an example of what Lena has written so clearly about - the folk tale (as distinguished from the religion story) generally tells the parts of the "story" that are left out of the official version.  In India, the official version having a lot to do with honoring parents -- here's a "yes, but . . . " to that.  

[lena]

If Lachchi and the ghost had gone on the run, the husband's letters would have been received (and presumably answered).  The denial of that communication is what I meant by psychological torture.

The thing is, Kishen's first letter goes astray because the messenger runs into the Ghost when he tries to deliver it, but the rest of the messages go astray because Kishen's reaction to this story is to abuse the messenger's wife, and therefore she burns all the rest of the letters instead of letting her husband try to deliver them. You can't blame all of that on the Ghost. This is the thing about this movie--it may be visually colorful, but morally it's all shades of gray. In the context of a story about choice and free will, you can't then say that the guy who just goes along with what everyone else tells him to do is blameless. As Darshana says, it's a warning of what can happen when you blindly follow the norms.

[Poonam]

The thing is, Kishen's first letter goes astray because the messenger runs into the Ghost when he tries to deliver it, but the rest of the messages go astray because Kishen's reaction to this story is to abuse the messenger's wife, and therefore she burns all the rest of the letters instead of letting her husband try to deliver them. You can't blame all of that on the Ghost. This is the thing about this movie--it may be visually colorful, but morally it's all shades of gray. In the context of a story about choice and free will, you can't then say that the guy who just goes along with what everyone else tells him to do is blameless. As Darshana says, it's a warning of what can happen when you blindly follow the norms.

Does Kishen abuse the messenger 's wife? I may be wrong , it's an age since i saw this movie. I thought the messenger's wife was mad as hell with Kishen because he'd humiliated her husband. So when he turns up with letters again, she just feeds them into the fire.

I love this story precisely because of its ambiguity, the visual richness of traditional culture is a smokescreen hiding all the messiness of human emotions and its outcome. I just wish more people in India had perceived it that way, stopped and took out the time to think it over a little. But maybe it was a little too disturbing, scary even. The other thing is, unfortunately, most filmgoers here have such set ideas about what to 'expect' in a film that the moment you put in a pair like SRK-Rani (or maybe just SRK) they get disappointed with anything different these guys attempt. Sorry, I know I'm diverting the topic, but i always feel upset when a good, interesting movie fails to 'make it.'

Carla, this is also in response to your comments on Shah Rukh's performance. After watching many 'unappreciated' (by the BO) films like Amitabh's 'Dev', 'Khakee', or SRK's 'Swades' , Ive come to the conclusion that when it comes to the big stars, we often unfairly place the burden of a role entirely on an actor's shoulders. The director's substantial role in this is forgotten/ignored by many. Amol doesn't do mainstream stuff, he has his own ideas, and he visualised SRK's role in his own way, not with an eye cocked on the BO. It's not that the big stars can't or won't do things differently. It's that once they become big names, directors want to play safe and mine their star images continually for assured BO success. So you see shades of earlier characters often being repeated. It happened to AB. It's happened to SRK. At least, that's how it seems to play out in Bollywood. Maybe that's changing a teeny bit now.

Agree with you about SRK's hairstyle, he ought to have grown it out or something. But Paheli was made in a hurry - a mere 45 days or so of shooting. It could be that there wasn't enough time to tackle the hair isssue. And I doubt he could have worn a wig and worked in the 44 deg.C temperature of Rajasthan. The fake moush was hard enough to tolerate! 

[Darshana]

How did those guys wear their hair anyhow?  long and wavy like the Elizabethans?

[Bollywood Fanatic]

Speaking of hair in Paheli, when I watched it with my friend (whose first Indian film it was) we both agreed Sunil Shetty's highlights looked too modern for olden day Rajasthan!

[delia]

Speaking of hair in Paheli, when I watched it with my friend (whose first Indian film it was) we both argeed Sunil Shetty's highlights looked too modern for olden day Rajasthan!

And so does his carefully trimmed "three-days-beard"... 

[Vijay_UK]

And so does his carefully trimmed "three-days-beard"... 

And SRK's nicely made Moustache that doesn't grow or shorten once in the film......

[Poonam]

How did those guys wear their hair anyhow?  long and wavy like the Elizabethans?

Not so sure, but I think longer at the back and sides(than what SRK/Suneil sport in the movie) reaching almost to the lower end of the neck. Rather like a blunt cut. Most of the time, it would've been tucked into the turban, I imagine.

[veracious]

I was reading Carla's review at her blog and unfortunate for her, just the first paragraph got me thinking so much I couldn't go back to read the rest until I came here to write out my thoughts..

Its resolution may not be palatable to all - but Amol Palekar's Paheli ("riddle") is a folk tale, not a morality tale. 

This is something that occurred to me; most Bollywood are morality tales. Even when the style is edgy and realistic, many stories resolve in the bad getting guy killed or punished, and the good guy being rewarded for getting rid of the bad guy. You have villains and innocent girls and vamps and heroes. Now, sometimes the heroes are assholes but typically, if you don't cheer for somebody, they get an unhappy ending and the one you cheer for gets a happy one. All well ends well.

Are we forced to watch Paheli through this frame as just about every other Indian film begs us to watch it through it? Or is it that Paheli goes along with the Bollywood 'formula' so much that we end up watching it through the frame it's not meant to be seen through?

By 'we' I suppose I mean the people who found the ending so unappealling it was a real turn-off. But I really only mean myself, I don't mean to generalize.

I oppose to the idea that there's something wrong with the viewer if they don't like the movie so basically, while I can't largely blame Palekar's movie for being what it is, I suppose it must've been somehow unclear what message they were trying to send. Like, what's the core reason for making this movie. If it's female empowerment, I have to say, I think they could've picked a better story. If it's just to tell a folk tale.. but that's another thing - people don't make folk tales into movies unless to portray a message. At least not in my view.

[smithie09]

I guess my response would be to say that morality isn't static.  It changes based on location, time period, religion, gender  ... very few films that depict female empowerment (this is of course assuming that Paheli falls into this category which certainly is debatable) adhere to traditional views of morality.  You have to remember that "morality" is a reflection of society...society that is dominated by men.  Their version of morality is necessarily going to represent their interests.  Its not absolute or correct...its just as fallible as any other social construction.  By failing to adhere to traditional morality, Paheli is questioning it.  I think we are doing exactly what the filmmakers intended...we are debating it, thinking about it, deconstructing it.  They aren't asking us to view it a certain way, they're asking us to recognize the lenses we personally are looking through.  I don't think Paheli is meant to be accepted, I think its meant to be provocative.  That's the message (IMHO).  Its also meant to be entertaining  .

[Dil Bert]

By 'we' I suppose I mean the people who found the ending so unappealling it was a real turn-off. But I really only mean myself, I don't mean to generalize.

I oppose to the idea that there's something wrong with the viewer if they don't like the movie so basically, while I can't largely blame Palekar's movie for being what it is, I suppose it must've been somehow unclear what message they were trying to send. Like, what's the core reason for making this movie. If it's female empowerment, I have to say, I think they could've picked a better story.

Yay.  It certainly would have helped if there had been more foreshadowing of the cruel and arbitrary nature of Paheli's universe.

[blue]

Like, what's the core reason for making this movie. If it's female empowerment, I have to say, I think they could've picked a better story. If it's just to tell a folk tale.. but that's another thing - people don't make folk tales into movies unless to portray a message. At least not in my view.

I feel it does have a message but it is very subtly done. It does not scream out its intentions.The message is that love is more valuable than money. Also that Love conquers in the end. It was as simple as that for me.

It also makes you think about women's role in society, of the right to be unhappy in a situation one has been put in without a by your leave and the right to choose a companion/lover and not suffer quietly. But it is not a morality tale as many people expect folk tales and fairy tales to be.