What do you find so worrying about the recent released PC movie – Mary Kom ? Well, the movie can be called an artificial saga, which fails to connect the audience with the struggle of a lady seen as a gallant boxer. However, at the flip side, you have a shinny picture of Priyanka Chopra, which deserved a tan image on the silver screen for the obvious reasons. Fortunately, our Indian audience are known to ignore such flaws and trivial issues found in our Bollywood movies. Amidst this movie embarking last week and Mardani the previous two weeks before, you have an interesting equation this year claiming that 2014 has the highest number of women centric movies.
Gulab Gang and Queen
This started with Madhuri and Juhi Chawla starrer – Gulab Gang, which was released this year in March getting mixed reviews from the critics, however, the box office performance wasn’t that decent. Then embarked another Kangana Ranaut starrer Queen, which made the Bollywood free from the stereotype it had against woman characters. Now, you have movies with tangible script for the ladies of B Town who performed incredibly well unlike the men in Bollywood do. In queen you find a woman based movie, wherein the lady is seen doing something good for the betterment of the mankind. She was seen very much in a usual character that faced with a relatable problem. The final canter seems validating the movie along with its growth speaking for itself. Despite not much effort to narrate the story of the movie, Queen was still well presented before the audience. And the very good thing about it was that it simply do not reek of feminism in the academic fashion. It has proved out to be one of the most layered movies, which turn out to be the entertaining one for the audience.
As people simply gloated about the success of queen being an unique woman centric movie, you had other ones like Mardaani embarking few weeks before that is counted among the fight saga. Perhaps many of the audiences have enjoyed watching this movie owing to the commitment as a movie, which invest purely on one core issue without actually falling for the superfluities. Though the movie was a big one, yet it had issues with its climax. Well, there is no need to show a woman beating up a man and showcasing her physical energies. Perhaps it seemed more like a feminism turning grossly bad at the end. Though a woman would really find it delightful to watch a movie having dealt with sexual terrorism in some of its scenes, yet the misleading feminism shown at the last simply puts the movie into claptrap content. Perhaps it simply recalls the tradition of Rekha wherein she is seen beating up Kabir Bedi to vent out her frustration. Powerful woman are not all about showcasing physical powers but showcasing wit and intelligence, which should be the part and parcel of Mardani.
Mary Kom
With this movie, there were several other issues to deal with. Mary Kom has invested very less amount of efforts in telling up the story of a legend as you see the movie simply covering the tough time of this lady in haste. The only sequence wherein her physical capacity was tried was really gleeful to watch. However, it fails to enter into the category of woman centric movies. Well, just seeing woman at the central character in the film is not the yardstick of a woman oriented movies, it should extend the objective of having more and more stories that are being narrated from women’s perspective. Perhaps the commercial viability of the movie was seen working at the end for sure. At the end of the day, it is all about business, however, amidst all these money transactions, there is a scope to change the attitudes, so how about doing it?
Wrapping up
The noble struggle for Mary Kom, Mardani, Queen or Gulab Gang is a testimony to the reality that you have the certain audience to watch the movies with woman at the centre stage (protagonist role). Perhaps the box office range would still not suffice to crack the 100 crore deal, however, you can now find a visible change in the B Town movies, which will for sure pave its own way to a longer run.
