Bulbbul
Cast: Tripti Dimri, Avinash Tiwary, Rahul Bose
Director: Anvita Dutt
Movie Overview:
A man returns home after years to find his brother's child bride and is released, and his ancestral the village suffers from mysterious saints.
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| Bulbbul Bollywood Movie 2020 Review-Moviezadda2050 |
Review: While watching Bulbbul I realized that Clean
Slate Films the production house headed by Anushka and Karnesh
Sharma is actually carefully cultivating a new sub-genre in Hindi cinema- the
feminist supernatural film After Phillauri and Pari, we have Bulbbul which
is the story of a chudail These films upend traditional ideas of what
constitutes evil and what is scary The horror isn’t a ghost or a witch lurking
in the forest, It’s the systemic oppression of women and the brutality inflicted
on them by men Women break these shackles by becoming something other than
natural. Their spirit cannot be contained As her name suggests, Bulbbul was
always meant to be amongst the trees, We first see her as a little girl sitting
on a branch in bridal finery The film starts in 1881and is set in the Bengal
Presidency Bulbbul is about to be married to a much older man
When she asks her aunt why she needs to wear a toe-ring, her aunt explains,
that there's a nerve in the toe that needs to be pressed otherwise the girl
will fly away, Of course, it's going to take more than that to control Bulbbul
The film then moves 20 years ahead, when she’s a grown woman,
commanding the haveli Her brother-in-law Satya returns after five years and
slowly, we unravel the mystery of Bulbbul and why men in the area are dying with such alarming consistency Bulbbul is the
directorial the debut of Anvita Dutt who's also
written the story Anvita is a well-known writer and lyricist –
among other films, she’s written the dialogue for Pari and Queen With Bulbbul,
she reveals her keen eye for beauty The film, shot by Siddharth Diwan is
visually sumptuous Red which symbolizes celebration fertility and anger is the
dominant color motif starting with the opening credits which play out against
lush red flowers, We see red on Bulbbul’s feet which have been
immersed in 'Alta' Key scenes, including the climax are bathed in red hues Even
the moon turns red And of course, red is in the blood that's being spilled The
violence is in sharp contrast to the film’s aesthetics which have been inspired
by the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma The looming haveli the ornate saris
and jewelry the exquisite interiors echo Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s
Devdas Like Devdas and Paro in that film Bulbbul and
Satya are childhood friends who part because he is sent away Satya
also goes to study law in London Through childhood to adulthood Satya has
been Bulbbul’s confidante and creative partner They write a book
together In Phillauri, Shashi, the character played by Anushka Sharma was
also a writer –clearly Anvita is interested in the inner lives
of creative women But the relationship between Satya and Bulbbul can
only wreak havoc because she is married to his older brother Indranil who also
has a twin, Mahendra both played by Rahul Bose Bulbbul is a film about the cruelties of men and the
compromises that society forces women to make
But it’s set up as a spooky grandma’s tale Anvita, Siddharth production designer Meenal Agarwal composer Amit
Trivedi setup the atmospherics effectively We get the persistent fog the eerie
sounds of the dense forest the horse carriages in which no one can feel safe
The characters and their relationships are also etched with care The most
intriguing is Binodini Mahendra’s wife played by the beauteous Paoli Dam
Binodini is wily She’s provocative and political But Anvita gives her depth, showing us in one scene what her
compulsions are All the women are prisoners which is why Binodini tells Bulbbul in hushed tones:Badi havelion mein bade raaz hote hain
The actors deliver assured performances Tripti Dimri as Bulbbul seamlessly moves from being a vulnerable girl to a woman who revels in her strength I hope though someday we can move away from
the cliché that a woman with the spine will necessarily drink and smoke It’s
nice to see Tripti reunited with her Laila Majnu co-star Avinash Tiwary
Avinash’s role is the most standard one here but he infuses it with sincerity
Parambrata Chattopadhyay is reliably good as the local doctor and Rahul deliver
strong performances as the twins –one who has a glimmer of conscience and the
other who doesn’t Bulbbul has enough to admire
but ultimately Anvita trips on her own writing The care with which the
characters and the setting has been detailed doesn’t extend to the plot The the narrative begins with the promise of layers which we see in a character like
Binodini but it slowly flattens out and becomes one-note Especially some of the
male characters who are there only to be murdered The messaging overpowers the
storytelling which deflates the grip of the film And inevitably in the climax, Bulbbul falls into that silly space that supernatural films
often do The action doesn’t adhere to the internal logic of the film -can a
chudail really gets hurt by a bullet? The special effects are efficiently done,
but when you start asking these questions, the spell is broken Bulbbul doesn’t coalesce into the fiery tale you really hope it
will become But Anvita is a director with craft and ambition and that’s always
exciting You can see Bulbbul on Netflix
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