Film review of “Yeh Nazdeekiyan”
This article was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-11, Jul-Aug 1982)
It is indeed unusual to find three simultaneously running films in which the main women characters refuse to suffer passively, but instead attempt to change the situation which causes their suffering. The women in all these films are strong, determined and effective. Their decisions visibly alter the circumstances in which they are placed. These women fight for the right to live with diginity. In that sense, the films are somewhat different from the ordinary run of Hindi films.
These films address themselves to the question: what is it which motivates a woman to take up paid employment? But in each film, almost before we are given a chance to see the woman immersed in her work, before we can see her in an activerelationship with her work, workplace, co-workers, the director has already dinned into our heads that the motivation is entirely different from that of a man, that, in fact, whether a woman does or does not take up paid employment is entirely dependent on the behaviour of the men in her life. She would never choose to do so, if she had the option of being dependent…
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