Movie Review - PINK

When you watch pink you wonder why hasn’t anyone made a movie on this before. It is so fundamental to a women’s existence- especially the middle class urban women, that you wonder what took it so long. There is no theme left that Bollywood has not touched- however obscure, but for a reality that is so in our face, so ubiquitous and so omnipresent, it took so long to portray.

May be the answer lies in this very paradox.

The issues raised and the all the subtleties and all the obvious-es are so much a part of our existence that we have become inured to it. It is like a pain that we have become so used to that we hardly think about it while going about with our lives.

When I watched Pink it was like a storm of emotions-a blast from the past, all the angst that I had forgotten about was raked up. I wonder if there is any woman in India who watched this movie, and had nothing that resonated with her. From a woman’s friendliness that is interpreted as a sign of her love interest, to a women’s dress whose length determines her character, the movie is filled with details that will shake you and disturb you and even though you may have been lucky in your life to escape a drama on the scales of what we see in the movie but it will still haunt you as if it is your story, your existence portrayed on celluloid.

The movie is similar to the genre of ‘Queen’- an entertaining, small budget film that challenges social stereotypes; although with a cast like Amitabh Bachchan I am not sure if I can call it a small budget, but given that it has no fancy foreign shoots and songs it can be called a small budget. The movie is also Clint Eastwood-ish in terms of a grumpy, recluse old man (Amitabh Bachchan) who finally steps in and saves the day for everyone.

But my favorite scenes in the movie were when it subtly ruffles the issues whether its northeast discrimination in our societies or the dilemmas of people expressed in the dialogue-“ I can either be truthful or liberal”

Whatever be your take, if you watch the movie you will definitely come out as either shaken if you are a woman, or sensitized (of the plights of women) if you are a man. This movie is not entertainment, it is a life lesson which if you haven’t already thought of, need to follow because that brings you one step closer to being a ‘man’- no not the lofty Rudyard Kipling man, just a normal average decent man ☺