FILM REVIEW
He was your lover. When his family found out, they unceremoniously threw you out. You were married to someone else, widowed, and for
years you struggled, fought with yourself - to forget, to construct a life for yourself. And now his family wants you to give it all up,
to take up the role of a caretaker for your one-time lover, now a schizophrenic. And you are supposed to say 'yes' with a smile!
The recently-released Marathi film Devrai, is a splendid, intense drama about schizophrenia, with its personal, familial and
social ramifications, and the bitter struggles involved in coming to terms with this strange illness and overcoming it. But viewed from a
gender point of view, the film delivers a disturbing, highly masochistic message for women. When there is a schizophrenic in the family,
who is responsible for his care? Must every dysfunctional male be provided with a wife-cum-caretaker? Is a woman's willing 'sacrifice' of
her own life a must to reclaim a man lost to mental illness?
Shesh (Atul Kulkarni) is a sensitive and brilliant young man from a village, and his mission in life is to undertake research on the
devrai, or sacred grove, with which he is deeply connected since his childhood.
But somewhere along the line things start going wrong with his academic plans. And over a period of some years, Shesh eventually succumbs
to the strain and becomes a full-fledged schizophrenic. Shesh's sister Sina (Sonali Kulkarni), who is a housewife and married to a
scientist, brings him to Pune and gets him treated. But solutions do not come easy in the convoluted world of mental illness.
The entire film revolves around the quagmire of Shesh's mental landscape and Sina's and his own efforts to get better. The way the
disjointed mental landscape of a schizoid genius has been treated in the film is a genuine cinematic landmark. The central character's
fluctuation between the external world and his own tortured subjective reality is fleshed out through the careful blending of images of
virgin sacred groves and slick urban interiors. Particularly intense are the moments when the borders between the two fuse in the
character's mind. For instance, in one scene Shesh is sitting on his hospital cot, surrounded by the lush grove, his feet buried in the
rustling dry leaves, when hospital attendants leap out of the greenery at him. In another scene, Shesh has locked himself in a toilet.
When he opens the door and peeps out, he sees his (to him) terrible brother-in-law passing through the grove, and hastily closes the door
again.
Mixed messages amidst fine art
It is a splendid, intense drama about schizophrenia, with its personal, familial and social ramifications,
and the bitter struggles involved in coming to terms with this strange illness and overcoming it. But
the film also delivers a disturbing, highly masochistic message for women.
Aparna Pallavi
reviews Devrai.
Manushi, Issue 151 -
He is your brother. And he is very sick - mentally. You would like to take care of him, but his presence in your house is irritating your
husband. And you are a woman, after all ...
Atul Kulkarni's rendition of this character is multilayered and the trauma of recognition and acceptance and the painful journey to
recovery is also portrayed with unparalleled sensitivity through the character of Sina. Sonali has done a great job portraying a hassled
woman trapped between the competing needs of a small child, a suffering brother, a husband who is destructively irritated at being 'put
upon'. Particularly poignant is the struggle of this character to decipher the strange stories - part reality, part fiction, part
sensitive but convoluted perception - that her brother tells her. At one point, when he tells her that Parvati, a servant of the family,
has been murdered by her husband, she rushes to the psychiatrist and then feels foolish when he suggests that she check out the facts for
herself.
The conflict within the family - complicated further because of Sina's financial dependence on her husband and consequent inability to take decisions with conviction, is played out with subtle but effective strokes.
But despite this excellent treatment of its central theme, the film has one flaw, and a deep one at that. In the playing out of gender equations that are inevitably tangled in such a situation, the film falls back, rather helplessly, on a bizarre version of the conventional role of nurturing expected of women.
Sina, though willing to take care of her brother and help in his recovery, is trapped between his needs and those of a husband who is willing to 'understand', but cannot stand a mentally ill brother-in-law in his own house. When he tells her 'politely but firmly' that the brother must be sent back to the village home, she succumbs without a murmur. And she digs up Kalyani (Devika Daftardar), Shesh's first cousin, his one time lover and now a lonely working widow, who must give up the life that she has constructed for herself so painstakingly, take up Shesh's 'responsibility' (whatever that means) and return to the village with him.
The film makes a strong case of the fact that Kalyani 'ought to' accept this 'responsibility', because Shesh 'needs' her - and in the process, it delivers a complex combination of social messages based on the expectation from women that they sacrifice their own needs and freedom for the well-being of their lovers and husbands. The idea is, Shesh the dysfunctional male 'needs' and hence also deserves a female caretaker. And since Sina 'cannot' deliver because she is tied up by the rival 'needs' of husband and son, Kalyani, childless and 'manless', and so conveniently 'spare', must step in and take the job off Shesh's family.
While the film does make Kalyani mouth a weak protest, it fails to provide any basis for her final 'choice' to do Sina's bidding except for her own desperate loneliness. And the serious implications of this choice for her own life - there are significant romantic and conjugal overtones to the 'caretaker' role - are also conveniently glossed over.
Smaller instances of a sexist perception of mental illness are also strewn all over the film. For instance, at the day-care centre where Shesh undergoes rehabilitation, there is not a single female patient. Sina is singled out for a lecture on the need for patience and perseverance while her husband's insistence that Shesh must be sent back to the village, away from his own personal space, is not questioned. One might argue that these touches reflect the sexist bias prevalent in society, but within the framework of the film, they are not perceived as such.
Devrai, as a whole, adds up to a great artistic experience and a very perceptive and insightful film on mental illness, but the sexist bias in the film is too prominent to be ignored.
Aparna Pallavi
Manushi, Issue 151
(published February 2006 in India Together)
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This issue of Manushi: Table of Contents
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Mental Health
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Women
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