Anarkali of Arrah: Swara and movie both fiesty

Cast: Swara Bhaskar, Sanjay Mishra, Pankaj Tripathi

Rated: 8/10

This is the film of the week — raunchy but not crude, unapologetic but not unreasonable, shameless but not shameful, audacious but not embarrassing. The centre point of all this intense paradox is the stunning, captivating and entirely enervating Swara Bhaskar as bombshell Anarkali, Anar to her fans.

It is entirely Swara’s film in which she finally gets a role deserving of her powerhouse of histrionic excellence. Playing a rustic singing superstar in the town of Arrah, she gives the film energy, pace, emotion and the right dose of unfailing raunchiness without which the film would have fallen flat, something that the keen eye of debutant director Avinash Das has written and unfolded as a seasoned man behind the camera.

Other than the fact that Swara helms the film, it is delightful that other characters around her are equally excellent in their skin, more so the ever-brilliant Sanjay Mishra. He encapsulates Bihar and its gundagardi as it has been down the ages. As the Chief Minister’s pala hua gunda who gets the reward of becoming the

Vice-Chancellor of Arrah University, and is brazen with his sexual exploits and hidden aggression, cloaked in humour when at ease and wanton violence when poked, Mishra is stellar. So is Pankaj Tripathi as Anar’sbhadva and bed partner with a wife on the side.

The film which has double-meaning songs that merge with the ambience of the locale in which the story unfolds, is actually a capsule of real life and times of girls in the profession of song and dance who are treated as everyone’s property, especially of men in power who can demand anything and everything from them, be it in bed or on the stage where molestation gets catcalls instead of horror.

Anar faces this when she is pawed and molested on stage with the entire town watching. She protests, slaps and has to go on the run pretty much signifying the death of the rights of a citizen in Bihar. Her anger, her helplessness, her longing to sing again, her boldness are all paraded with a realness that is captivating. The playback singers, mainly Lehenga jhanke by Indu Sonali and Donali ma jung by Swati Sharma, are catchy.

The film is a crackling tale from which there is no escape, including the ultimate challenge that she throws at her tormentors. It’s a story we all know about but it’s a film that makes you live through it. Kudos to the entire cast and crew. A must watch.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 26 March, 2017