Gunjan Saxena
Directed by: Sharan Sharma
Starring: Janhvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi
Streaming on Netflix.
This film worked for me, there are many reasons - for one, it tortures the protagonist like anything, of course it's inspired from a real story, making us feel even more. I can't recall a protagonist being this tortured in films that I watched recently, it's not about taking a beating physically - it's about the number of times she is told by people that she isn't worth it and yet she keeps self belief. They practically tire us by making her go through bad times and hence when she gets her due, even we feel rewarded - it's a simple tool, Rajamouli, Pixar and a lot of filmmakers and writers use this tool to their advantage in different ways.
The film is visually solid too, I could recall a shot where she gets rejected because they tell her that she is short and overweight and in that scene they chose to shoot her crying in a car just a little after the sun sets - the lighting, the shadows and the color of that scene perfectly matched what she was feeling. I was reminded of Uyare here and there, especially because films about pilots are so symbolically in sync with the idea of having freedom, flying with your dreams. Thematically, it backs the idea that doing what you do with utmost sincerety in itself is patriotism and it need not be externally portrayed and if everyone does their own bit for themselves - it's a win win for everyone - they put in individualism in a very subtle way, which I thought was brilliant writing.
The scenes where time passes by and she comes back after 10th, 12th and diploma and the montages where she loses weight - they are edited in a dynamic way - you can't miss a beat in those sequences. This film in spite of having women empowerement as a prominant theme, it never felt preacy because here we don't see Gunjan saying things like 'women are equal to men' - her actions prove that and the situations she is thrown in - they make us feel against patriarchy.
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