India is a country of festivals and cinema is one of them.
Like any other
festival, cinema provides entertainment and education to millions of people
every day. Every Friday, Indians celebrate the screening of new films.
Movies play a significant role in the social-emotional development of an
emerging adult, especially in a country like India, where the larger-than-life
portrayal of the Hindi movie world is a very big part of the generations. Life
lessons, character connections, and social relationships in a movie are what
stick in the mind of the audience for a very long time. Movies not only have a
positive effect but might also have a negative effect on the collective self-
image of society. The movie's offerings to its audience are heavily dependent
on society in general.
Sairat: A Love story that ends with the killing of the two lovers. It is a tragic
film. What caused this film to be tragic? The answer is the caste system.
The hero of the movie Parshya (which means gold) why am I’m mentioning
this? In the most iconic Hindi film Lagaan, the untouchable is named Kachra
(garbage) Anyway, and the heroine Archie belongs to different castes. The
hero is a fisherman's son who belongs to a backward community while the girl
hails from the upper caste.
The experiences of belonging to a lower caste get amplified, as it fuels the
backlash against the young lovers. This becomes evident when both of them
are caught sharing an intimate moment at the end of the celebratory song
"Zingaat". While Parshya is forced to leave the village, Archi’s family decides
to marry her off.
The first image of Archie is of stepping out of a black SUV, she drives several
vehicles throughout the movie, unlike Parshya, who never drives any vehicle in
the story. She rides a Bullet, Vespa, Tractor, and Active throughout the movie.
The vehicle in the movie serves as a symbol, which represents the attitude and
the feeling of the character. She rides a Bullet, and a Tractor whenever she is
representing power. When she rides with her friend on the Vespa (a feminine
scooter), is when she is driven by the love of Parshya. Towards the end of the
film, she drives her husband and kid around in an Activa, a vehicle that is both
powerful and equally feminine.
Archie introduces herself to her soon-to-be mother-in-law. She subtly invites
Parshya to her farm. Power is also represented symbolically hereby signs such
as tractors and bullets. She casually requests water and drinks it from the
vessel they use. Even today, lower caste people are not permitted to enter
certain houses or share a common vessel. In some rural areas, if a person from
lower caste touches the water, it is deemed unfit for consumption. As a
member of the upper class, she invalidates this discrimination. Here Director
shows that discrimination can also be voluntarily broken, through love and
inter-caste marriages.
Archie intervenes in the fight between Mangaya and Parshya and asks
Mangaya to stop, when he doesn’t listen to her, just with the authoritative
tone of her voice she asserts her dominance over him. Mangaya decides to
take care of it later, although she is a woman, she declares that if he touches
him, she will not hesitate to break his face. She shows her liking towards him
by getting him out of trouble and displays her love for him. Throughout the
film, Parshya is beaten up by several people and is always helpless. Initially,
Mangaya beats up Parshya, and then he gets beaten up by police, goons, etc.
Whenever Parshya, is in trouble, Archie shows up, threatens or physically
beats up the opponents, and then saves him. In a stereotypical narrative, Men
is always the one who saves the women, but here the roles are reversed, she is
both powerful and feminine and she saves him from all the trouble he faces.
She is the one who initiates the plan to run away.
Even after the marriage, she doesn’t know how to cook, she gets up and finds
a job, he cleans the house and cooks for her. Only after he goes to a job and
starts earning, the reversed roles start to disappear and the institutional
husband and wife roles start to appear. Which establishes the rules of
capitalism, the power lies where the money is. When both of them get a job,
when she rises towards equality (financially and socially) he starts to doubt
her, and finally accuses her of immoral behavior, and hurts her. The only
person, weak Parshya hurts in the film is the powerful girl that saved him from
all his troubles. This highlights the happening of the society where patriarchy
defames and attacks every achievement of women. whenever they try to rise
to the same level. Wherever women try to break free from patriarchy and
make their own choices, the system is broken and honor killing happens.
Until the first half of the film, Sairat maintains a familiar style for expressing
romance. The second half of the picture, on the other hand, is surprisingly
empty of comedic situations. The style adopts an observational point of view
in this case, opening up the visual space to highlight the troubles of these two
runaways in an unfamiliar metropolis. In the end, the narrative of Sairat hits at
the unavoidable truth, which displays Archi and Parshya's bleeding bodies.
Notably, the last section is marked by complete silence, signifying the
authoritarian silencing of romance, social transformation, and the audience's
expectations of a good resolution to the conflict. The child leaves the house,
leaving a trail of bloodied footprints.
