Gandhari

பானியும் (டாப்ஸி) அவருடைய கணவரும் ரயிலில் சென்றுகொண்டிருக்கிறார்கள். திடீரென ஜாய்புரா என்ற ஊரில் அவர்களுடைய குழந்தையைக் கடத்திவிடுகிறார்கள். குழந்தையைக் காப்பாற்ற ஓடிச் செல்கையில் பானிக்குத் தலையில் அடிபட்டு கண்பார்வையில் பிரச்னை ஏற்படுகிறது. ஜாய்புராவில் இப்படியான குழந்தைக் கடத்தல் அதிகமாக நடப்பது பற்றியும், அதை நிகழ்த்தும் நெட்வொர்க் பற்றியும் பானி அறிந்துகொள்கிறார். அதன் பிறகு, பார்வைப் பிரச்னை சரியானாலும், பார்வைச் சவால்கொண்டவர் என்றே தனது அடையாளத்தை வைத்துக்கொண்டு ஜாய்புராவில் தங்கி, தன் குழந்தையைத் தீவிரமாகத் தேடுகிறார். இறுதியில் தன் குழந்தையைக் கண்டுபிடித்தாரா, இந்தக் கடத்தல் குழுவின் பின்னணி என்ன, ஜாய்புராவில் அவை எப்படி ஊடுருவியிருக்கின்றன என்கிற முடிச்சுகளை அவிழ்ப்பதே நெட்ஃப்ளிக்ஸ் தளத்தில் வந்திருக்கும் இந்த ‘காந்தாரி’யின் கதை. (தமிழ் டப்பிங் உண்டு).

A land that worships the divine feminine yet treats its women poorly. This is a paradox that rings tragic and true both in reality and in the fictional world of Gandhari. The film is set in Joypurra, an unsettling place where the disappearance of young girls has been frighteningly normalized. The story opens by establishing a happy family of three. Taapsee Pannu and Ishwak Singh play a husband and wife and parents to a young girl Mishti. When Mishti suddenly goes missing the narrative dives straight into the conflict.

If I were younger and brasher, I’d start this review with something as direct as: Gandhari is one of the worst Hindi films of the year. I’d rant about how it creates a world record for the number of scenes in which characters speak off-screen so as to hide the clunky exposition and dialogue added in post-production; how lip-syncing is a mythical concept; how this is salvage-job filmmaking at its peak. I’d go on about how the movie treats feminism, motherhood, child trafficking, gender-based violence, trauma and breathing as a smug SoBo aesthetic; how the phrase “my culture is not your costume” was invented for screenplays like these. I’d balk at the Do Patti-coded twists, disorienting music and editing, disjointed acting and disingenuous metaphors. I’d be outraged by the film’s Haseen Dillruba-coded lens of toxic love, where the scene of a husband and wife literally clobbering each other is scored to a romantic ballad: such a ‘punchy’ love language. I’d be angry to the point of incoherence, much like the film in question.

The opening 10 minutes of Devashish Makhija’s Gandhari is perhaps the clearest indication of the film’s intentions — and its intellect. Written and produced by Kanika Dhillon, it opens with the kidnapping of a five-year-old travelling with her parents on a train. When her mother, Bani (Taapsee Pannu), realises her daughter is missing, she tears through a crowded platform after the kidnapper, only to be knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. And because Gandhari apparently has no interest in leaving suffering at merely one notch, we soon learn that the injury has also temporarily robbed Bani of her eyesight. From there, the film’s idea of character development appears to be little more than a contest in accumulated misery. A traumatised and blind mother, leaning on a walking stick and waiting outside a police station, hoping they will help find her daughter: it is an image so nakedly engineered to elicit pity and helplessness that it barely registers as characterisation. In the next scene, the film piles on another layer of dread: as the parents grow increasingly desperate, a passerby tells them that if kidnapped children are not found within 48 hours, they are unlikely to be found at all. This is, in fact, Gandhari’s preferred mode of persuasion: pile misfortune onto a character, arrange it into a sufficiently potent image, and assume the audience will fall in line.

The moment you see a happy family in a train compartment, with a little girl and her big doll, you know something wicked this way comes. The girl vanishes, and her increasingly distraught parents, Bani (Taapsee Pannu) and Gokul (Ishwak Singh) find no help from the local police in Joypurra (fictional, of course), somewhere in Bengal. This is the kind of small town we see in streaming shows, as constructed as their plots, sequence after sequence filled with loud background music trying to stand in for tension because nothing on screen cuts it, either because we’ve been inundated with similar stuff, or we simply can’t buy any of it. Or both.