Issue 184 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published March 1995 Copyright © Socialist Review
Bandit Queen is a film about the life of Phoolan Devi--a low caste Indian woman who fought back against her oppression and became a hero for thousands of lower caste Hindus in the state of Uttar Pradesh in the 1980s.
It tells her story of an arranged marriage at the age of 11, her repeated rape by upper caste bandits, her resistance and the eventual formation of her own gang. It shows how she surrendered to the police in 1983, on her terms, to the cheers of thousands.
The film has provoked a storm of controversy and its director, Shekhar Kapur, has been under virtual house arrest since its release. But he is uncompromising about his motives.
'I wanted to make people angry,' he says. 'I was angry and extremely disturbed by this story. When Channel 4 first asked me to produce this film I said no. But then they sent me the proofs of Mala Sen's book and that gave me the idea of using Phoolan Devi's story to tell the larger story of the caste system in India.
'I was also angry because I have lived in India so long and I didn't do anything. I am as guilty as anybody else. These things are happening every day. They are in the papers all the time. Being a film maker I realised that I could make a difference.
'I wanted the audience to feel the same anger that I had felt. So I set out to deliberately provoke that kind of rage and not to intellectualise.
'I wanted to use the one case to make a larger point, that this is general, this is a consequence of the system. It is about how women are looked upon and treated. I knew at the time that if I did it there would be trouble. The story has been done before. But I decided to try to make a film about the caste system.
'I wanted to show how it operates, the fact that it is omnipresent. Whatever happens in India, somewhere the caste system has a presence. Caste is very oppressive. It is wrong for 20 percent of the population to oppress 80 percent of the people. It is also economic, because it gives the 20 percent the 80 percent as cheap labour. Low castes know that whatever they do in their life their lot will not better. People live out their lives without hope.'
Caste divisions come across clearly in the film, but what does Shekhar Kapur think about rich and poor in India, class divisions?
'The two are not the same but they are very mixed up,' he says. 'The caste system is an economic system with a religious sanction. The lower castes do the menial jobs, do not own land, banks will not lend them money.
'If you walk into an Indian village you know which are the lower caste houses. The lower castes are skinnier and darker because they work more in the fields, the higher castes are heavier. It's a hierarchy, even in this film there are many different castes. The gang is divided by caste. Phoolan Devi is raped by men of different castes.'
Shekhar thinks there is a role for serious, popular films in India alongside the mass entertainment industry known as Bollywood.
'I have tried consciously not to turn Phoolan Devi into a myth otherwise there is no sense of reality. It is very interesting what the media said about her. Before she surrendered nobody knew what she looked like. They talked about this beautiful woman with light eyes, lightish coloured hair, tall, with a beautiful singing voice. It was rumoured that when she went to raid a village she used to stand there and sing and mesmerise the people while the gang would raid the houses.
'It is nonsense. She hardly ever raided villages. Most of the time gangs survive by kidnapping and ransoming the children of upper caste families. When she surrendered she was a small, average looking woman and the Indian press never forgave her for that. Immediately from being a beautiful legend going around and fighting for her rights after being raped, she became an ordinary every day killer because she didn't physically live up to the myth.'
Among the critics of Shekhar Kapur's film are some feminists in India who have said the film insults Phoolan, and Indian women, by showing rape scenes and so invading her 'sexual privacy'. 'Yes I do invade her sexual privacy,' he says. 'I was very conscious of that. What else could I have done? I don't want viewers to be objective. I am attacking the values of the society that surround rape. The more honest you get, the worse it's going to be.
'But I think I am being attacked by people who are not worried about me violating Phoolan's modesty, they are worried about their own--the sort of people who sit there knowing this is going on and comfortably intellectualising and not doing anything about it.
'Bandit Queen is currently banned in India. The government says the film will provoke rioting and violence. I don't think that, but it will make people angry. One of the reasons they have banned this film is because they don't want it shown before the elections that are coming up. But it's become the hottest underground video. I hope it will help change things.'
Sam Ashman
La Reine Margot
Dir: Patrice Chereau
La Reine Margot is sumptuous, fascinating and filled with great emotional intensity. The film tells the story of a real historical event, the St Bartholemew's Day massacre which took place in 1572 in France. The marriage of Catholic Marguerite de Valois, the French king's sister, to Protestant Prince Henry of Navarre sparked off the brutal slaughter of up to 25,000 Protestants and 30 years of devastating warfare.
The massacre is familiar to any French schoolchild, but it is an unusual subject for a French film. French cinema is well known for avoiding the horrorific incidents of French history. Patrice Chereau, La Reine Margot's director, said recently that in many French films 'history is just a pretext. They make no claim to be dealing with the political situation of the time. I chose to look at history from a moral point of view. How do you come to terms with this monstrosity? How do you live it?'
Chereau talks about the film's relevance to the war in Bosnia, but some film critics interpret it as a collective admission of French guilt, including collaboration with Nazi Germany. Thus the scenes of the aftermath of the massacre are deeply reminiscent of footage of Auschwitz.
Chereau has no hesitation in showing the French ruling class as utterly corrupt and vicious, dominated by the scheming old Queen Catherine de Medici. Those who are not poisoning their way to power are weak and useless, such as Henry of Navarre, known as the founder of modern France, who is uncouth and spineless.
Chereau has also directed a play by Christopher Marlowe about the massacre, and one of the film's great strengths is the way that, as in Marlowe's or Shakespeare's plays, personal themes intertwine with great historical and political events. Thus King Charles, a weak and foolish figure, gives the infamous command to slaughter all the Protestants--'I don't want a single one left alive who can come back and reproach me'--because he is guilt ridden and fearful. To prepare for the film, the director apparently watched hours of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, so the film combines theatrical drama with cinematic style. The result is intriguing plot and characters and strong visual images, such as the slow death of King Charles, sweating blood, or Margot, her white dress dripping blood.
The film is dominated by Isabelle Adjani as Margot. She develops from a corrupt and manipulated object to a figure of courage and principle. Her relationship with her lover is never as interesting as the plotting of her family. The most interesting relationship in the film is that between her Protestant lover and the Catholic Coconnas, which expresses the potential for human beings to overcome bigotry and predjudice.
The only weakness of La Reine Margot is that the historical significance of the characters is not as well known to English audiences as to French and therefore, the impact of the damning critique of the church and the royal family is weakened. Apart from this, the film is absolute proof that it is possible to make a film about a historical event which is gorgeous, engrossing and a devastating attack on the ruling class and the bigotry and hatred it uses to maintain its rule.
Judy Cox
My Crazy Life (Mi Vida Loca)
Dir: Allison Anders
Gang warfare in the United States, especially in Los Angeles, has been a frequent source of media hysteria throughout the 1990s, most recently around the trial of rapper Snoop Doggy Dog for murder.
Blaming gangs for violence and crime in American society is used by politicians and police to whip up anti-crime fears and stoke up racism.
The reality is that blacks and Hispanics who are poor or working class in the United States are at the bottom of the pile in a deeply racist society. Unemployment is high, welfare practically non-existent. For many, the gang is the only means to live, earn money, and belong. Gangs are a direct response to the racism of the police and to the frustration of being outside the system.
The uprising in 1992 in Los Angeles marked the first serious truce between the major gangs, the Crips and the Bloods.
Allison Anders made her film shortly after the riots in Echo Park, a real Hispanic gang area, and to ensure authenticity got many of the real gang members to help with the script. Her film concentrates on the lives of the women in the barrio--who have to deal with bringing up children and coping with life after their men are killed or jailed, often by the age of 20.
The film is realistic up to a point. It is clear that these women are trapped with no magic way out of poverty and oppression. They struggle on welfare, are independent and strong, and every bit as tough as the men.
It is centrally concerned with how these women (some played by real gang members) respond to personal crises--losing lovers, raising kids--but the outside world obviously intervenes. One woman who gets out of prison plans a job in computers and quickly discovers that with no education, no previous employment and a prison record she has no chance.
Although the film does focus on the women in Echo Park, the men are by no means unsympathetic characters. Their stories are of brutal, often short, lives dominated by guns, drugs and cars. Most of them are sexist, which is to be expected, but the potential for equality between men and women is groped towards in at least one of the relationships.
My Crazy Life is funny and refreshing, the women are portrayed sympathetically as people struggling against oppression rather than falling victim to it. This is true both in personal terms--illustrated by one character, Giggles, deciding not to live with her lover because she doesn't want to be dependent--and in terms of the state. Hatred of the police and the sense of invasion felt by the gang members when the cops enter the barrio is palpable.
However, the film is weak on racism, barely mentioning it, which is a surprise, not only because racism is a fact of life in the ghettos, but because the Hispanic cast were all stopped and searched as they were filming! It also glosses over the reality of ghetto life.
The emphasis on the personal lives of the women means that it does have a slightly sentimental tone at times, and it is not particularly hard hitting, but it is still pretty good, especially given that it was originally made for Home Box Office, an American cable television channel. Worth a look.
Megan Trudell
Bar Girls 'a hilarious romp through lesbian dating rituals' opens the ninth Lesbian and Gay film festival at the National Film Theatre in London on 18 March. Highlights will be touring the country from April. For more information phone 0171 957 8924.