Sara’s movie review: A brave film on women’s reproductive rights with its own share of unconscious bias-Entertainment News , Firstpost


With Sara’s, Jude Anthany Joseph has created a mass-targeted, full-blown commercial film that takes this explicit stand: her body, her choice. About time too.

Before turning to the new Malayalam release, Sara’s, let’s rewind to 2016 and the Indian film industry that still receives a disproportionate amount of media coverage: the Hindi industry a.k.a Bollywood. Remember Ali Abbas Zafar’s Sultan? In that film, a talented woman wrestler called Aarfa Hussein gets pregnant before a critical phase of her career but has the baby anyway. Her decision is not beyond belief. Many women might do likewise, either under family pressure or because it is genuinely what they want– the improbability in that film, though, lay in the fact that in present-day India not a single person even mentioned the word abortion to Aarfa.

To not raise the issue at all, though it would in all likelihood have been raised in real life, amounted to the film not even recognising this option available to women.

Cut to 2021 and another Indian film industry headquartered a few state borders away: Malayalam cinema a.k.a. Mollywood has shown the guts this year to bring us not one but two prominent films on women’s reproductive rights, an issue that causes immense discomfort and resentment across all communities and countries.

Don Palathara’s Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam, which was premiered at the International Film Festival of Kerala in February, is about a couple on their way to a doctor’s clinic to confirm a pregnancy they had not planned for. And now in Sara’s, the leading lady is not only vehemently disinterested in having children, most of the film is a conversation on a woman’s right to an abortion.

For an out-and-out mainstream Indian film to use that once-forbidden word without apologies, to spell out the details of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 1971, and to overtly, unflinchingly support a woman’s freedom in this matter makes it pathbreaking in and of itself. Sara’s is flawed in other respects, but over and above everything else that can be said about it, it must be lauded for its courage.

Anna Ben stars as the titular heroine of this film by Jude Anthany Joseph whose penchant for smart women protagonists is well known. Exhibits A&B: Ohm Shanthi Oshaana, Oru Muthassi Gadha. Anna plays Sara Vincent, an aspiring filmmaker in Kerala who tells her boyfriend Jeevan (Sunny Wayne) that she does not want babies.

“It’s not that I don’t like kids. I just don’t have the knack of handling them, and it hasn’t seemed essential to me,” she explains. “For me, a person’s ultimate aim should be to contribute something by which the world can remember you after you die, not just to have kids and be remembered by them.”

Jeevan doesn’t want children either, though for a different reason. The divergence in their motivations and which of these lines the film emphasises is where Sara’s reveals its own unconscious bias. More on that later.

Anna Ben, Sunny Wayne in a still from Sara’s

As expected, soon the narrative shifts from addressing hypothetical situations to the hard realities Sara and Jeevan face. The director’s storytelling style remains easy and breezy even when his subject turns grim. It is not all smooth sailing in Sara’s though.

For one, at every step, the characters who openly, unequivocally support a woman’s bodily autonomy are men, not women. Sara’s mother never rises above being a background figure. (Minor spoiler ahead in this paragraph) And the most vociferous opponent of her right to choose is her mother-in-law throughout. (Spoiler alert ends)

The script’s propensity to over-stress a point rears its head more than once. Jeevan’s mother, played by Mallika Sukumaran, is an unfunny caricature of a pushy woman, never more so than when, (Minor spoiler ahead) on her very first meeting with a rank stranger, she gets the girl to clean a baby’s urine off the floor. (Spoiler alert ends)

The limits to the film’s subtlety are evident too in the portrayal of Jeevan’s sister, a full-time professional and parent who sweetly and politely treats her jobless brother and later, their mother, as domestic help. (Minor spoiler in this paragraph) She goes so far as to tell Sara in one passage: “Jeevan started at his new office today. Till the maid comes, I brought my mother here from her home.” (Spoiler alert ends) This is not to suggest that a self-centred woman should not be shown on screen, but this depiction becomes questionable in a film that plays up the heroine’s male allies and has little room for female solidarity. Contrast this to the astounding brilliance and nuance in the writing of the heroine’s relationship with her mother-in-law whose own daughter takes her for granted in The Great Indian Kitchen.

Half-baked writing kills every character whose presence could have illustrated how different women can be happy taking paths different from Sara’s, whether it’s Jeevan’s mother and sister or the actor who quit at her peak and whose husband tells Sara his wife has his “permission” to work. And fleeting though it is, the comical portrayal of a husband who repeatedly impregnates his reluctant wife in Sara’s is a continuation of Mollywood’s tradition of trivialising domestic violence and marital rape.

It is vital to keep all this in mind even while recognising the value of Sara’s and listing out its pluses. The film’s overriding pro-choice theme is brave. The heroine’s struggles are convincing, as is Jeevan’s fluid stand on parenthood. And the decision by the director and writer Akshay Hareesh to make a Muslim medico Sara’s strongest supporter is crucial in the current national socio-political context in which the Muslim community is being demonised as a baby-producing factory responsible for India’s population growth.

It is important too that Sara is a Christian because of the false impression prevailing among Indian liberals that opposition to abortion comes from Muslim and Christian conservatives alone, when in truth, committed religionists from every community in India are opposed to the termination of a pregnancy.

Saras movie review A brave film on womens reproductive rights with its own share of unconscious bias

The cast of Sara’s is not uniformly impressive, but the leads are good and Benny P. Nayarambalam playing Sara’s father stands out among the supporting actors.

Sunny Wayne delivers an easygoing, naturalistic performance as Jeevan. And Anna Ben follows up a run of solid roles in her fledgling career (Kumbalangi Nights, Helen, Kappela) by carrying Sara’s on her shoulders, pulling off the range of emotions written into the script. When she is a schoolkid in Sara’s, she does not play cutesy, and through the years that pass on screen, her entire body language visibly matures.

In the midst of all this talk about the sensitive handling of the pivotal issue in Sara’s, it is impossible to escape the film’s own pre-conceived notions of parenthood and its stereotyping of those who prefer not to have children. The dominant social discourse in India leans heavily towards the view that those who do not wish to be parents are selfish and/or avoiding responsibilities. This school of thought holds that becoming a mother is a higher calling than any other, and that reproducing is the duty of women and men.

Even comparatively liberal folk who are parents tend to believe that child-free couples have picked an easier path versus those who are (a word commonly used by parents to describe themselves) selfless enough to have children. Sara’s fosters this traditionalist thinking, beginning with Jeevan’s initial explanation for why he does not want to be a Dad: “Career, hanging out with friends, travel – to sacrifice all this and be selfless for your kids, I don’t think I can do that like my mother’s and father’s generation.” The stereotype is underlined by Dr Hafees (Siddique) who is positioned somewhat as the voice of the filmmaker and whose counselling session towards the end of Sara’s seems to encapsulate the film’s stand on parenting and abortion.

Hafees rightly says that too many people become parents without being prepared for it and under social pressure to do so. His description of parenthood is telling though. It requires a “divine talent” he tells Sara and Jeevan, adding that “Not everyone can do it” and “It is better that people who can’t do it should not” to avoid being responsible for another human being’s “troubled childhood”. His monologue has no space for good people who are simply not interested in having children or the larger, far more controversial idea that the planet may at present need more such people. Hafees’ backing for couples who do not reproduce rests on his assumptions about what they lack –willingness to sacrifice, “divine talent”, abilities required for the job – and, by implication, the pedestal on which he places those who do have children.

A complex issue is reduced to a simplistic argument here. Cultural commentators often speak of a male gaze in cinema; Sara’s does not offer a male gaze but the gaze of many liberals who are parents – supportive of those who don’t want children, but also quietly placing themselves on a higher plane.

A critique of this attitude is the next step to demand in mainstream Indian cinema. As we push for that to happen, it is necessary to acknowledge the extreme significance of Sara’s. This is not an esoteric film that might reach only the converted. Instead, Jude Anthany Joseph has created a mass-targeted, full-blown commercial film that takes this explicit stand: her body, her choice. About time too.

Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars)

Sara’s is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

 

 



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *