Futuristic (?), grim....ultimately, not human. Review on Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women

The opening scene of this movie is that of a father drowning his newborn daughter in a vat of milk. That sets the tone for this movie. Matrubhoomi-A nation without women, is a fairy tale told upside down about a time in India where there will be precious few women left in the country. What will society, civilisation look like then? According to Manish Jha, the director, his vision, as portrayed in the form of a village in Bihar, is this.....

PLOT-

Imagine, if you will, a village full of grown, frustrated, precious little separating them from animals, men. There aren’t any women in the picture, no mothers, no sisters, no wives, no daughters…the men want to get married, but there aren’t any women to get married to. The most rare, and looked forward to, occurrence in this village is a marriage. You even have greedy fathers dressing up their young sons as women, in order to get a large dowry from the prospective groom’s family.

The story of the film is centred on a “high-caste Thakur” family headed by actor Sudhir Pandey, and his five grown sons. The sons keep urging the father to get them a bride, which he tries to do with the help of the village priest. The village priest, on a work related visit to another village, spots a young woman, disguised as a man. He immediately tracks her down and asks her father for her hand in marriage, for Sudhir Pandey’s oldest son. The girl’s father is reluctant initially, but gives in, in the face of a large dowry he gets. Ultimately, the daughter (Tulip Joshi), is married off to all five of the sons and has to sleep with all of them, AND the father. The only man who is remotely kind to her is the youngest son (Sushant Singh), and the young servant boy who works in their house. Seeing her obviously favour their younger brother, the four jealous older brothers and father eventually kill Sushant Singh. When Tulip wants to run away and gets the help of the servant boy, he is killed as well. The servant boy’s family, in order to take revenge on the high caste family, violate and rape Tulip Joshi. In the midst of all this, Tulip gets pregnant, she is treated tolerably better by the family, until the lower caste men claim the child as theirs. Then ensues a caste war, with all the Thakur men getting killed. The last scene shows Tulip giving birth to a girl.

REVIEW-

THIS was the grim story of Matrubhoomi. While it is commendable to bring attention to the issue of female infanticide, was it necessary to do it in such an inhuman, unbelievable way? Granted men without women will be quite a few notches down the “civilisation” yardstick, granted women are treated as dispensable and as an economic burden in quite a few societies still….but to have a vision such as this, where men are portrayed as un-reform able beasts, where human existence is portrayed as one without goodness, without hope, is completely unacceptable to me. As a woman, I didn’t feel in the least moved or saddened by this movie because it was so far from what I perceive as reality…also the fact that the one woman there is, is portrayed as one without a lot of intelligence, content to go along with whatever hand fate deals her, raises the few feminist hackles I have.

The movie itself isn’t badly directed, is well acted, nicely shot….but what good is that if the premise that the movie is based on, is completely indigestible?