Matrubhoomi | The Critique

Rating: 5/5

What happens when a female infant is killed? Humanity walks a few miles towards its extinction.  My novelette ‘I Died… Long Before’ was a question about how a girl feels when she realizes that she is supposed to be killed. May be that’s the reason I was so eager to watch this movie and in all humbleness I must accept that my work of literature was as much as a pebble on beach when compared to this magnum opus. 

It is an unconventional movie for sure. It shows why women are important. It shows what can be the height of a person’s (read man) sexual frustration. It shows how much a woman can bear. The movie beautifully escalates the rawness and harshness of storytelling with every scene but never crosses the limit. The poor girl is raped a number of times but commendably, director never asked the actress to expose. In a normal mainstream cinema, there is more skin-show than this intellectual and hard-core realistic movie. There are more than countable metaphors. On a second thought, the entire movie is a brilliant metaphor.

Actors have done justice to their roles. Special mention of veteran Sudhir Pandey, an apt Shushant Singh and a beautiful Tulip Joshi. They did their job with an exceptional brilliance. As a director Manish Jha sets a benchmark for everyone to follow.  It will be a very difficult task for him to match this movie in his upcoming endeavors.

Last note: The name of the girl (lone female character) is Kalki. It’s a great metaphor. Kalki is the name of last avatar of Lord Vishnu to mark the end of mankind (Kalayuga) and begin everything from scratch (Satayuga)… To have an ownership of Kalki (a woman) everyone with malicious intention dies and Kalki gives birth to a daughter… A new beginning.

Written By: Sujoy Ghosh