Smita Patil's death anniversary

Here are a few films of hers I love - time to celebrate what we did get to see, while we mourn what we lost:

What a woman wants! Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika

Loosely based on the life of the Marathi stage and screen actress Hansa Wadkar, Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika (1977) deals with a woman’s search for identity and fulfillment. Usha grows up in a near destitute family of performers.
She learns music from her singer grandmother but is constantly berated by her mother Shanta (Sulabha Deshpande), who has found some respectability in marriage to a drunkard Brahmin (!). She does not want the performer stigma for her daughter and keeps telling her that marriage is the way to respectability.

In this set-up, the man who can and does help them is Keshav Dalvi (Amol Palekar). While flirting with the mother, he also pursues Usha. Eventually he helps the child Usha find a role in cinema, and we see her grow up (Smita Patil) to become the most desired actress of her time. Usha is attracted to the handsome actor Rajan, played by Anant Nag. Her mother continues to restrict her life and in a bold bid for freedom, Usha marries Dalvi. She dreams of giving up cinema to become a full time wife and mother, only to be forced to act in more and more films by Dalvi. Her frequent fights with Dalvi always take her to Rajan’s door but he has commitment phobia. She also meets and gets involved with Sunil Verma (Naseeruddin Shah), a narcissistic writer director. Their relationship leads to a botched double-suicide attempt. Usha then ends up in a near ‘married and stay at home wife’ like situation with the wealthy Vinayak Kale (Amrish Puri) who has a paraplegic wife. Usha stops working and plays housewife all day long, but her dream world is shattered when she realizes that just like the wife trapped in bed, she is trapped in this household and not allowed to leave its confines. She has to seek Kehsav’s help to escape the Kale household. Exchanging one kind of prison for another, she returns yet again to Bombay to billboards splashed with her face.
More here

Mandi – do ankhon ki tulna!

Shyam Benegal’s Mandi (1983) was one of a handful of films in which two amazing actresses came together in well-matched roles. The first one was Arth (1982) and Mandi followed close on its heels. The earliest one, Nishant, was clearly Shabana’s film with Smita in a lesser role. A satirical tale verging on black comedy, Mandi dealt with the buying and selling of human flesh. The hypocrisy associated with the buyers was matched equally in parts by the avarice of the sellers but also their ultimate honesty in the approach to these transactions. Is prostitution a blot on society, or is it the band-aid that contains the disease of society and prevents it from erupting into something bigger and worse? Who is right? The madam who shelters abandoned women, but also trains them to ply the trade, or the hypocritical social and political leaders who profit from these businesses while having questionable morals?


The story is told in a raw and uncompromising way – Shabana plays the madam, Rukmini Bai, who controls a bevy of young women plying the oldest trade in the books. The prize of the kotha is the “virginal” Zeenat (Smita Patil), who is sheltered and pampered and spoilt by Rukmini. Naseeruddin Shah in trademark shorts and scruffy shirts plays the jack of all trades, Tungrus, who runs errands, scrubs the girls backs, get them tea and food and chases off marauders. He is servile and obedient in the daytime and drunk and disorderly at night, telling off Rukmini Bai for her misdeeds and her parrot for his name-calling!

More here