PINK: A powerful film

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Tapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Andrea Tariang, Angad Bedi, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Piyush Mishra

Rated: 9/10

You can call it an uncomfortable masterpiece. The subject is everyday. The presentation is extra-ordinary and the actors fleshed out to the core. Pink is a moving, hard-hitting, stark and candid film on eve-teasing, bullying and character assassination of working Indian women and it has been stitched up with a lot of care and caution.

The first outstanding thing about it is that it does not wear kid gloves — not for the victims and certainly not for the well connected perpetrators. It shows up the police as it is, a hand-maiden of unscrupulous political masters, deceitful and totally insensitive.

Though Shoojit Sarkar is not the director of this speaking film, he is everywhere, in every frame, in every dialogue. But Pink is not about being or not being director’s film. It is intensely subject oriented and the subject is so common that it happens all around you but you still look the other way.

Set in Delhi, Pink is the story of three roommates who are working women from diverse places — one from the North-east, the other from a Muslim family in Lucknow and the third one from Karol Bagh in Delhi itself (Tapsee Panu). They are bold, bindaas girls who like their fun and drinks, who wear modern clothes and are in modern vocations. Life is a frolic till one night, they go to a rock concert, befriend a bunch of men and accept their offer of dinner at a nearby resort.

After being groped at the resort, one of them smash a beer bottle on the perpetrator and flee — only to be hounded by these well-connected men to jail, humiliation and a long court battle.

It happens everyday and courts are full of such cases. But issues like these are taken as seriously as, say, healthcare in our country and it is this stark fact that Pink focusses on and pans out without any extra drama but very engagingly nevertheless.

The treatment, or should one say, ill-treatment of women by a patriarchal society has been stressed upon by this film whose masterstrokes come at all levels.

First is the treatment of the subject — all punches pulled but without being over dramatic. The underplayed histrionics when stark questions like “are you a virgin” and “when did you lose your virginity” are asked of the victim in a packed courtroom are thrown at her with a straight face, that too by the girl’s lawyer!

The second and most powerful master stroke is the choice of actors. Amitabh Bachchan is powerful, intimidating, old and real. Though he is a bit underplayed as the lawyer of the three girls, he is a picture of realism. Tapsee overtakes him and the girls played by Kirti and Andrea are no less. Even Angad Bedi looks patriarchal all the way and his lawyer is a picture of courtroom menace. A captivating and powerful ditty on the life and times of urban working women. Must, must see. 

Source: The Sunday Pioneer, 18 September, 2016