Starring: Somnath Avghade, Rajshree Khara, Kishore Kadam, Nagraj Manjule
Directed by Nagraj Manjule
Rating:
12 Years A Slave is about racism in the America of the 1840s and this week’s new Marathi film, Fandry, looks at the plight of the Dalits in contemporary rural Maharashtra, but both are powerful and hard-hitting for the same reason: in the way they implicate the privileged in the humiliation of the oppressed. Fandry is about an exploited family of pig-catchers living on the very margins of the society. They trap pigs for their daily meal, animals that feed on human excreta. Fandry largely plays out like a coming-of-age film, about its young Dalit protagonist Jabya’s love for his high-caste classmate Shalu. The forbidden love gives him a few hidden dreams...a pocketful of discreet happiness. Potentially the love is a disruptive force that could bring down the caste and class differences. But does it? The stark, rough and raw film exposes the inured viewers to caste-based prejudices in all their ugly extremes, in the perennial degradation of Jabya and his family and especially in the long, harrowing last sequence capped by a jolting climax (a nod to Shyam Benegal’s Ankur). Never ever has the national anthem been better used in a film, to reproach us and, in turn, bring out our collective remorse.
