So where does this violence spring from? Prologue text points to a something on everyone's mind in 2015: religious extremism. The 2012 Delhi gang rape and fatal assault of a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern further underscored India's epidemical violence toward women. Popular among the Mallah, Phoolan was elected to parliament in 1996, but was assassinated in 2001 by three masked Thukurs apparently hired by one Sher Singh Rana, a revenge killing. After spending 11 years in prison, awaiting trial, Phoolan was released and the government withdrew its 48 criminal charges, including murder. Instead, Bandit Queen mostly serves as a scathing indictment of Indian society, one that still embraces unimaginable sexism and brutality against even innocent little girls, and a caste system out of the Dark Ages, completely out of step with the emerging, 20th century India. Rather, the movie seems to suggest Phoolan became a notorious bandit for no reason other than, given the choice between slavery, rape, and humiliation versus life as a criminal, she choose the latter. And despite Phoolan's popular image among the Mallah as a kind of Indian Robin Hood, she herself is never actively portrayed as stealing from the rich and giving to poor, as it were. Written by Ranjit Kapoor and Mala Sen and directed by Shekhar Kapur ( Masoon, Elizabeth), the film does not attempt to justify Phoolan's revenge killings, confined mostly to the film's last third, including the mass murder of Thukur men.
However, Gujjar is released from prison and savagely reasserts his Thukur authority over the Mallah Vikram and Phoolan. Further, Vikram regards her as an equal, desiring to win rather than command her respect and, virtually alone among all the men seen in the film, treats her with kindness.
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Under Vikram's leadership, Phoolan becomes a crack bandit. He rapes her repeatedly, until his Mallah lieutenant, Vikram (Nirmal Pandey) becomes so offended by his leader's savagery that Vikram shoots him dead and takes over. He's currently in jail, so the gang has been entrusted to a colossal Thukur who resembles the late Richard Kiel. With nowhere else to turn, she joins a hoard of dakus (bandits) hiding out in the hinterlands, the Thukur-controlled Babu Gujjar (Anirudh Agarwal) gang. She goes to live with her fat, bald but understanding cousin, Kailash (Saurabh Shukla), but eventually his wife kicks Phoolan out of their home.
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When one unsuccessfully attempts to rape her, he accuses her of trying to seduce and blackmail him, i.e., she was "asking for it." As the village government is run by Thukurs (mostly men in her husband's family at that), the trial is a joke and Phoolan is banished from the village. At night Puttilal rapes her and she flees back home, which only brings shame to her family.Īs an adult, Thukur men continually subject Phoolan (now played by Seema Biswas) to sexual harassment. Torn from her family, she essentially becomes her husband's slave, fetching water and tending to his family's goats. Twilight Time's Blu-ray offers a good transfer with excellent 2.0 DTS-HD MA surround sound, as well as a couple of good extra features.īorn into the lower-ranked Mallah caste, Phoolan (Sunita Bhatt), about five years old*, is sold by her father (Ram Charan Nirmalker) to a 20-something, higher-ranked Thakur, Puttilal (Aditya Shrivastava). What would be unbearable is offset somewhat by Devi's story, that of a woman who adamantly refuses to break, and ultimately takes control over her own, seemingly predetermined fate. It depicts child slavery, forced marriages, pedophilia, and cruel class prejudice in just its first ten minutes, followed by gang rape, custodial rape, misogyny, humiliation, degradation, assassination, political corruption, unethical medical care, and mass murder. Regardless of details the picture might have gotten wrong about Devi's life, Bandit Queen is nonetheless gripping in the manner in which it exposes India's brutal inhumanity toward its lower caste peoples, in particular its unpardonable treatment of women and even small girls. Further, conservative critics representing India's privileged classes strongly objected to its portrait of Devi as a kind of Indian Robin Hood, though that's an overstated complaint. She sued to prevent its release, claiming it was riddled with inaccuracies. Devi was not consulted during its making and disliked the finished product. The movie was highly regarded by most western world critics but controversial in India, and apparently banned in at least some parts of the country. Bandit Queen (1994) is a fascinating though grueling Indian-British co-production, about real-life rural Indian bandit Phoolan Devi (1963-2001).
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