An opportunity lost .... . Review on Daman

An opportunity lost ...., Trivialization of a all-too-real evil .... Idea gone horribly awry ... just a few titles to this review that I was thinking about. All these would have been appropriate, really. Daman came highly recommended ... A human interest story, music by Bhupen Hazarika, story of domestic abuse .. well, at last someone dared to take up this topic in mainstream Bollywood. Well, if trivialization of evil in a movie is a crime, the makers of this movie will most definitely be jailed or hanged.After the first 15 minutes of the movie, you realize that there is no hope for a realistic movie in this morass of stupidity. The opening scenes show Durga (Raveena Tandon) wiping her ’’mathe ka sindoor’’, tacitly acknowledging the power that it has over her anyways. She is then shown running away from her home ,daughter in tow, during the opening credits and that really raises the hopes of the viewer, .. hey, maybe the rest of the movie will show how she fights back and maybe, even wins against the demons plaguing her. The first letdown is when she is falls plum into the lap of luxury. She is adopted, no questions asked, by a wealthy socialite. The reason - ’’You are the daughter I was longing to have’’ or ’’never had’’, whatever. I was going to throw a handful of popcorn at that crap, but my friends glared at me and I desisted. Hey, if a battered woman is adopted by a rich benefactor , more power to her, she caught a break. But I thought it would be more worthwhile to depict the lives of the other 10 million (and probably many, many more) abused and tortured women who suffer eeveryday in modern India. Probably, no actual battered woman will have more luck than to eke out a living and slowly pick up the pieces of her life. It is these women who need their story told...... As the movie progresses, the incidents in her life are shown as flashbacks. Her marriage shows Raveena as the tallest and fairest in the village. ’’She must be taking multivitamins’’, one friend offered a helpful explanation. Jokes apart, a glamorous Raveena is totally unsuitable for the role of an Assamese village girl. After a nerve-wracking and forgettable song , she is shown as entering a dysfunctional family ... a domineering mother-in-law, a cuckolded father-in-law, and of course, the demonaic and violent Sanjay Saikia (Sayaji Shinde). Sunil Saikia (Sanjay Suri), her brother-in-law, is shown as the only decent and level-headed person in the family.At this point honorable mention should be made of the camera work when there are scenes showing Saikia’s violence. Imagine a person trying to hold a camera steady on a ship at sea ... also imagine the ship being pummeled by 15 foot waves, and you will have had a fair idea of the camera movements. Mercifully, the camera gets steady towards the latter part of the movie (previous one fired , maybe).After the mandatory ’’husband visits mistress on the first night’’ scene and numerous scenes of torture later, Durga is shown as a mouse-like figure, confused as to what she should do next. She settles down to a life of constant misery from her husband. A couple of unnecessary songs (when are songs actually necessary ?) are thrown into the mix to heighten the torture. There is obvious attraction between Sunil and Durga .... Here, Kalpana Lajmi chickens out by not letting her characters speak about it.... instead, Sunila Saikia interlaces his fingers behind his head and Durga sleeps and dreams. And a song is launched ! One of the most disturbing scenes in the movie is when Durga is raped by her own husband. This is a real disturbing scene and you get a glimpse of what a great movie this would have been if the same honesty was applied to the whole movie. This is probably the only scene in the history of Indian cinema (as far as I know) that shows the horror of domestic rape. This scene is of course, plagued by the camera handling described in the previous para, which considerably blunts the effect. To add insult to injury, one can briefly but clearly see the shadow of a person on Sanjay Saikia in this scene, again bringing the ’’superiority’’ of the camera effects to the fore. Did they forget to pay the editor for this movie ?As we move on, the character of Durga seems less and less likeable. The movie makers seems hell bent on proving that Durga is Durga only in name. This Durga is meek, blessed with no perception, and sorry to say, plain stupid at times. Case in point, in one scene she forces her brother-in-law to go out searching for her husband with her. When their car comes face-to-face with Sanjay’s jeep and it is obvious that Sanjay is drunk, Sunil wisely instructs Durga to hide in the car while he goes out and convinces Sanjay to come home. Durga, for God knows what reason, thinks that she can do a better job at it. After all, he has already raped her and tortures her physically any chance that he gets, so obviously he will listen to her and follow her calmly, right ? In a fit of stupidity, she chooses to ignore her bro-in-law’s warning, gets out of the car and tries to convince her husband to return; predictably as Sunil had thought,the depraved Sanjay, on seeing them together thinks that both are having an affair. This shocks Sunil (why ? he is only a wife abuser and rapist, but a false accuser .. Noooo ! Not that ) and falls to his death into the nearly river. At this point, the screeching ’’Yeh aapne kya kiya ?’’ by Durga gets on your nerves. If the intent of the character was to make the audience sympathize with a traumatized woman who does not lift a finger to better her own lot ,the attempt falls flat on its face. Consider when the police inspector tries to convince her to continue her education. Durga admirably displaying her lack of initiative and drive, calmly asks him how she can go to school with students the age of her daughter (’’Correspondence courses !!!’’ I screamed silently). She further elaborates that this happens abroad (wherever that is), but this is India. The anctimonious, sarcastic smile on Durga’s face in this scene has to be seen to be believed. Incredible as this statement seems, the stupid idiotic inspector just shuts up. This proves what the viewer has suspected all along, that Durga is a fatalistic woman who would rather run away from trouble than to make an effort to get on her behind and do something about her situation. Even at her benefactor’s house, she is shown doing nothing more productive than braiding her ’’malkin’s’’ hair. There is a moronic and stupid segue into the life of Durga’s daughter (Raima Sen). You would think that the daughter of an abused woman and one living on the charity of a rich benefactor, would be inspired to concentrate on her studies and try to become something. Instead we see her wearing designer clothes and romancing an almost mongoloid college boy (Shaan - even the cockroach in my bathroom can act better). The viewer is subjected to the ultimate insult of seeing two totally amateur teens go about their business of gaining a foothold in the movie business. The ending is as predictable as death after life. Watch out for the only 5 minutes in the movie that Durga actually asserts herself ... Also has the only instance in the history of Indian cinema where the wrong end of the ’’trishul’’ is used to kill the villain. The performances are okay. Sayaji Shinde exudes menace and depravity in some scenes but overhams in others. Sanjay Suri is great and delivers a measured performance. Raveena Tandon is also okay, could have been great but is hamstrung by the shallowness of her role.Overall, amateur handling of an all-too-present, everyday evil of domestic abuse. A great opportunity lost to depict and convey the horrors of domestic violence. Wish we had a woman in there who grits her teeth and screams that she will win ...... and in the end wins !