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In a highly class conscious society like India, will the love between a domestic help and the very eligible bachelor she works for gain legitimacy? Watch Sir - Is Love Enough.
In a highly class conscious society like India, will the love between a domestic help and the very eligible bachelor she works for gain legitimacy? Watch Sir – Is Love Enough.
A movie trailer which talks about love spanning across classes in an Indian context is being the buzz of the town and rightly so! Karan Johar Shankar Mahadevan Faye Dsouza Rajeev Masand, and many other industry stalwarts are sharing the trailer and talking about it.
The trailer of Sir- Is Love Enough? was released by Zee Music Company on March 5, 2020. The movie is set to be released on March 20, 2020. It is directed by Rohena Gera and it stars Tillotama Shome and Vivek Gomber in leading roles.
The film revolves around two characters – a man and his domestic help who is a widow. It is an unusual story in the sense that it deals with prejudices which are present in all of us whether in an overt fashion or in a subtle way. The story deals with the falling in love of the man with his domestic help and the issues which follow thereafter.
The film is not centered only on the theme of love. The female protagonist has her own aims and ambitions, and it is also about her journey of fulfilling those dreams which she dreamt about and envisioned for herself.
Sir was premiered in India last year at the Jagran Film Festival. It has been screened at film festivals in more than 20 countries- France, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Netherlands, etc. to name a few.
At the 19 Annual New York Indian Film Festival, the movie won the award for the Best Film and Tillotama Shome bagged the award for the Best Actress.
The film was showcased at Cannes too where director Rohena Gera became the first female filmmaker to win the Gan Foundation Award. It has also won Audience Awards in Amsterdam and Birmingham.
Coming back to the movie, Gera speaks about how the issue of class divide is something which she faced as a child. Having a live-in nanny as a small child, she grew more attached to her and the issues of racism and segregation within her own household is something she saw at a young age.
In an interview at Cannes, Gera says, “the film is quite unusual in the way it takes on an issue and I am really happy that the committee could connect to that because in many ways it is a very, very Indian film; even in the treatment of the issues.” The fact that this film found takers in a European setting and the European audience could connect to it speaks for the film.
When Shome read the script of the movie, it made her feel very uncomfortable and she was tempted to directly skip to the last page and see what the film would resolve to. The film exposes a lot of prejudices which a lot of us are guilty of having. “Prejudices which are archaic, prejudices which are redundant and prejudices which really shouldn’t exist. But they do exist within,” said Shome in an interview at Cannes.
Bollywood is known for making love stories which are sometimes unrealistic or stories which makes you feel uncomfortable and leaves you with questions to ponder upon.
This is not the first time we are coming across a Bollywood film which talks about love between people who hail from different classes of the society. In modern days, however, films like these have taken a backseat. But we do have examples of such movies in the olden days – most of which were typical masala films, and unrealistic.
The most classic example is Bobby (1973) starring Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia where a rich business tycoon falls in love with the daughter of a fisherman. In Laadla (1994), a factory owner marries a union leader. Then there is Raja Hindustani (1996) starring Aamir Khan and Karisma Kapoor where a rich girl falls in love with a taxi driver.
The question is, Sir shows a similar situation much more realistically, something that can happen. Are we willing to let go of our class-consciousness and embrace it?
The trailer promises a lot. If the movie depicts the issues realistically, it will be a big thing for the country where notions of a feudal and hierarchical society exist still in the vacuum.
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Shows like Indian Matchmaking only further the argument that women must adhere to social norms without being allowed to follow their hearts.
When Netflix announced that Indian Matchmaking (2020-present) would be renewed for a second season, many of us hoped for the makers of the show to take all the criticism they faced seriously. That is definitely not the case because the show still continues to celebrate regressive patriarchal values.
Here are a few of the gendered notions that the show propagates.
A mediocre man can give himself a 9.5/10 and call himself ‘the world’s most eligible bachelor’, but an independent and successful woman must be happy with receiving just 60-70% of what she feels she deserves.
Darlings makes some excellent points about domestic violence . For such a movie to not follow through with a resolution that won't be problematic, is disappointing.
I watched Darlings last weekend, staying on top of its release on Netflix. It was a long-awaited respite from the recent flicks. I wanted badly to jump into its praise and will praise it, for something has to be said for the powerhouse performances it is packed with. But I will not be able to in a way that I really had wanted to.
I wanted to say that this is a must-watch on domestic violence that I stand behind and a needed and nuanced social portrayal. But unfortunately, I can’t. For I found Darlings to be deeply problematic when it comes to the portrayal of domestic violence and how that should be dealt with.
Before we rush to the ‘you must be having a problem because a man was hit’ or ‘much worse happens to women’ conclusions, that is not what my issue is. I have seen the praises and criticisms, and the criticisms of criticisms. I know, from having had close associations with non-profits and activists who fight domestic violence not just in India but globally, that much worse happens to women. I have written a book with case studies and statistics on that. Neither do I have any moral qualms around violence getting tackled with violence (that will be another post some day).