‘Pink’ Review — It’s not the best but given the times we live in, its better than our best

Make no mistake, ‘Pink’ is a landmark film. I doubt if you’ve ever seen a similar Hindi film! It is a retort that gives vent to the disgust and contempt we feel each time we step outside with a woman. The stares, the comments, the thoughts that run wild, the violence in the air, ‘Pink’ is an answer to what my half of humanity subjects the other half to!

Minal (Taapsee Pannu), Falak (Kirti Kulhari) and Andrea (Andrea Tariang), three contemporary girls staying together in a residential Delhi colony, go to a party with Rajveer Singh (Angad Bedi) and his friends. Amongst other occurrences, Rajveer forces himself onto Minal and she smashes a bottle on his head injuring him badly. Rajveer’s friends and politically influential family begin harassing the girls, then file a case against the girls to paint them as ‘bad women’ who indulge in paid sex. An eccentric lawyer — Deepak Sehgal (Amitabh Bachchan) enters and turns things around. (None of these are spoilers, you could make all of this out from the trailer itself)

Dissecting the concept of ‘consent’ and our blatant hypocrisy on women and morality, ‘Pink’ shakes us up from the core and leaves us with quite a few intense, emotionally testing sequences that will stay with us long after.

There are subtle and clever references to peeping neighbours, workplace gossip, character assassination and inconsistent gender standards on drinking, promiscuity, clothing, partying, modernity, living alone and much more.

The vengeance with which the prosecutors try to defame these girls as ‘characterless’, tainted women deeply affects you by putting you in their shoes and makes you question your own morality as much as theirs.

A special mention to the scene where Falak makes a turnaround after Rajveer repeatedly insults Minal on call, the subtlety of Minal’s endearing reaction is beautiful! The abduction of Minal too is handled sensitively and the emotional outburst by Falak in Court feels heart-rending. Also great credit to the makers for making small little everyday things so gripping in the first half. Additionally, a smart move to not show the actual incident until the closing titles, that keeps you guessing yet focused on ideologies and not happenings.

However ‘Pink’ is by no means a perfect film. The raced second half ruins the realism that set in, in the first. The legal proceedings jump about so fast and so much happens in the background that it looses the gripping intensity of the viewer’s involvement in the first half. Unnecessary side plots such as Sehgal’s semi-stalking of the girls, his mental state and his ailing wife complicate the goings-on. By no means a great courtroom drama, vital occurrences are never brought up in the defendant’s arguments and despite some clever one-liners, Amitabh’s character is engulfed with unnecessary distractions thus never reaching the kind of peak it could have.

The menacing boys all of a sudden stop all scare tactics in the second half and it all seems to arrange itself to a convenient, Utopian end where gray becomes black and white a little too quickly.

I was also reminded of ‘Bhoothnath Returns’ in the second half, because of the strategic sermons gifted to Bachchan to get the whistles going in cinema halls across the country. However, movies are the most powerful medium of storytelling and arguably even influence and therefore, when it comes to specific movies, you need to make a choice to either view them from a cinematic lens or an ideological one and in the latter, ‘Pink’ defeats all the gaps in the former. Don’t get me wrong, ‘Pink’ isn’t a bad cinematic experience, in fact it is quite gripping, however you don’t feel like ‘making do’ with films of the pedigree of ‘Pink’, you want them to be perfect, to make even more of an impact and hence it feels great, but could’ve been greater.

Director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury is a known name in Bengali cinema but makes his Hindi debut with this one. Full marks for making a courageous, necessary film. Hopefully, he will perfect his art over his next movies. Kudos to Producer Shoojit Sircar for yet another winner! Piku, Madras Cafe, Vicky Donor, his portfolio of exceptional, rare Bollywood cinema keeps growing magnificently. Don’t we need so many more like him!

Made on a smart business model, ‘Pink’ too followed the same route of limited production cost, little but hard-hitting publicity, noteworthy star power and then completely trusting the merit of one’s own content and waiting for word-of-mouth to take over. Thus bringing financial returns but more importantly many more witnesses to this important message.

Kirti Kulhari is exceptional as the modern, Muslim girl from Lucknow who struggles with coping at first but comes out a winner at the end. Andrea Tariang’s role is limited to bringing up an important reference on our hostile treatment of the North East. Taapsee Pannu is candid enough in her underplayed scenes but could perhaps have done better in the louder ones. Piyush Mishra is honestly irritating with his now done-to-death diction, it’s tough to make out what he says. Angad Bedi is sufficiently menacing though his character could have been more consistent in both halves. Amitabh Bachchan is efficient, I doubt if it is any longer possible for him to not be. He makes the best of what he was given but his character could have been written better. There is limited scope for music in the film but the background score is well intertwined with the proceedings. The camerawork is spot on, not making you feel claustrophobic even though it is shot largely in one home and a courtroom!

I noticed mostly gripped silence in the 2 hours and 16 minutes the movie ran for (interestingly my cinema hall had largely older men and women) but I must admit that the claps and hoots on Amitabh’s pro-women sermons did give me sadistic pleasure. For the initiated, it will strike you but for the uninitiated, it will be a big slap on their moral masks and therefore you want as many people as possible to see it. All in all, ‘Pink’ is not the best, but given the times we live in and given the kind of cinema we are generally subjected to, it’s better than our best.