Shoma A. Chatterji reviews a film that carries the trademark Sanjay Leela Bhansali garish loudness, a melodrama that makes no distinction between courtesan and a prostitute. Her assessment: Bhansali has merrily mixed the two and confused the identity of the women of Heeramandi. It fares poorly in comparison with films with similar genre.
The problem with Heeramandi is not the too-much-in-the-face-glitz-glamour-colour and swishing ghagras in heavy zardozi work with beautiful dames pirouetting in the background pretending to dance which is more of an apology of dance than pure dance itself. We are more than used to the signature of Sanjay Leela Bhansali who brings in his films, loudness and chutzpah distanced from any semblance of the courtesans about who history narrates a different story.
The film fails to draw the sharp line that divides the courtesan from the prostitute. The socio-political identity of the courtesan and the prostitute is not identical. In the hierarchy of “public” women, the courtesan occupies the top of the ladder, the ‘tawaif’ comes next and low down comes the prostitute whose sole means of ‘entertainment’ is through selling her body. The courtesan maintains a strict physical distance from the men who visit her music hall and she entertains them mainly with her trained Hindustani music and song like the ghazal, the thumri and so on. Her initiation into sex work is preceded by an elaborate nath-removing ritual where the man who wants to be the first to remove the nath (nose ring) competes with others and a kind of auction decides on the topmost bidder. But who she will sleep with once she has been stripped of her nath is decided by the courtesan herself.
The prostitute or sex worker does not sing or dance but only resorts to her seductive charms through titillation and use of her body for money. But Bhansali has merrily mixed the two and confused the identity of the women of Heeramandi.
The film’s choreography is terrible. The chorus dancers in the background fail to tap the natural and trained dancing talent of Aditi Rao Hydari who plays Bibbo Rani. Her acting talent and her expertise in dancing have been sacrificed at the altar of beauty, glamour and a fake romanticisation of the very life of these tawaifs of Lucknow. There is no clue about their riwaaz with their gurus in dance. Music and dance, in any case, are just props in the series when they could easily have thrown up solid support to the characterisations.
In Heeramandi, Bhansali and his script writers have turned them either into tragic victims of their profession, exploited either by the feudal lords who “keep” them for sex or brutally villainous characters like the madam portrayed by the ageing Mallika Jaan (Monisha Koirala) who is desperate to organise her own daughter’s nath-ritual that will mark her entry into the flesh trade and allow her haveli to flourish. There is hardly any synchronisation between the freedom struggle in the sub-plot and the main story of Heeramandi and its tawaifs.
Realism, in the shape of characterisation, script, dialogue, have defined the sum and substance of off-mainstream films like Shyam Benegal’s Mandi (1983), Gulzar’s Mausam (1975), T.S. Ranga’s Giddh (1984), B.R. Ishara’s Chetna (1970) and Basu Bhattacharya’s Aastha (1996). There is no attempt made to veil the harshness of the subject or the brutality of the narrative with surface romanticism or cinematographic glamour. If love and romance do step in, they do so silently, and remain secondary to the core of the story.
Mausam, for instance, is a brilliant blend of realism and romanticism. The romanticisation on the other hand, comes in different colours, shapes and sizes beginning with the genre of the Hindi ‘courtesan’ film like Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah (1971) or Girish Karnad’s Utsav (1983) working its way through ‘modern’ interpretations like B.R. Chopra’s Tawaif (1985), Sagar Sarhadi’s Bazaar (1982), Yash Chopra’s Deewar (1973), etc. In these films, prostitution is used in the storyline as an ingredient to heighten the drama, or melodrama. The practice of prostitution is rendered subservient to the romantic and the glamorous angle.
Shantaram’s Aadmi (1941) was a bold and radical film which tried to portray the prostitute as more sinned against than sinning. There are two clear lines of distinction that classify the celluloid prostitute: the kothewalli and the no-holds-barred prostitute. The kothewalli or courtesan is framed with an invisible chastity belt linked to a heart of gold. She never proceeds beyond the dancing floor though her songs sometimes have bawdy lyrics. She remains untarnished till the end and entertains her clients only with her music and her mujras but never sleeps with them if she does not wish to. Her musical accompanists define her support system and there is a mutual bonding of loyalty between them. The kothewalli was so respected that her clients were not allowed to touch her much less, sleep with her. All this is conspicuous by its absence in Heeramandi. The stories can be pure fiction but the practices ought to have some semblance of reality.
The ‘dignity’ of the prostitute in ancient India has been highlighted in Utsav (Festival), directed by Girish Karnad, based on Sudraka’s 4th Century A.D. Sanskrit classic, Mrichhakatikam (The Little Clay Cart.) Utsav is a glorious celebration of prostitution during a period in Indian history where the prostitute teaches her lover’s wife how to make love to her husband.
The film was in open praise of prostitution as an essential social more of the period it represents, showing women who practiced their trade really enjoying what they did. Directed by noted playwright, actor and theatre personality, Girish Karnad, Utsav unfolds the iconography and the symbolic function of money (and by extension, the courtesan.) By showing money (signified by the ornaments) as a facilitative agent, harmless in itself, Karnad desired to evoke a golden era in Indian history when life was not only joyous but also free from want. Karnad himself said: “The film has no message, political, social or of any other kind. The basis is the Sanskrit theory that a work of art should create a rasa, a mood, an emotion – not preach. What I hoped to do was to revive the two qualities which ancient Indian literature had, but which we seem to have lost in the course of the last thousand years – sensuousness and humour. Not sex, but sensuousness, the poetic, tactile quality of it.”
These two designated modes, however, remain separate in the film, sensuousness being the property of the sequences associated with the courtesan and humour that of the larger social world represented in the film.
On the other hand, among the singing-dancing girls of Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal, 1960) and Pakeezah, the chastity belt is inviolable and people accept this as the sanctified right of these professional women. Sahib Jaan of Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah (The Pure One, 1971), remains the most typical representative of film kothewallis. She is the enigmatic tawaif trapped in her milieu, but ever-hopeful of being rescued.
All films with prostitutes as principal or important characters are mainly motivated by prospects of raising the film’s commercial viability. In rare cases such as Shyam Benegal’s Mandi or Sagar Sarhadi’s Bazaar have the directors addressed themselves analytically to the social and economic situation of the business of prostitution.
Indian cinema has focussed on the victim-identity of the prostitute rather than on her agency. Because this is what finds the greatest audience sympathy, has greater commercial value, is the least complex and offers scope for both romance and titillation. The few agent-identities have found expression in supporting characters like the dignified brothel madams in Mausam, Ek Nazar (1972), and negatively, in Pakeezah. The prostitute as a subject who is the main female character in the narrative could perhaps be found in the persona of Radha in Chetna. Giddh and Mandi too, show the prostitutes as subjects and agents, but there are no heroines in these films, in the accepted sense of the term.
Sadly, Bhansali’s Heeramandi does not fit into any of these categorisations in terms of the narrative, the screenplay, the characterizations, the editing, and their unfolding and most importantly, the tragedy of their lives, and deaths. The music and songs are very good but somehow, they do not seem to gel with the visuals and with the narrative. There are a few exceptions in terms of the performance such as in the portrayals of Aditi Rao Hydari, Sonakshi Sinha in a strange double role and Richa Chadha in a role spilling over with exaggerated melodrama. Sharmin Segal as Alamzeb, who may be called the heroine of this melodrama, brings down the film further with her completely flat facial expressions and flat dialogue delivery. Sorry, Bhansali, but we loved Gangubai Kathiawadi very much and Heeramandi stands poorly in comparison.
Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist, film scholar and author. She has authored 17 published titles and won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema, twice. She won the UNFPA-Laadli Media Award, 2010 for ‘commitment to addressing and analysing gender issues’ among many awards.