Bollywood Blast: Gangubhai Kathiawadi & Badhaai Do

I am very choosy about which Bollywood movies I watch but recently I have seen two rather excellent ones. They are both extremely Bollywood - there are songs, emotions are high, everything is dialed up to 11. But they also deal with serious social topics that Bollywood traditionally does not want to tackle or will only treat as a joke or a subplot. So if you're looking to make a foray into what India has to offer in terms of cinema, perhaps one of these movies could tickle your fancy.

Gangubhai Kathiawadi: Starring Alia Bhatt, a woman you can generally depend on to deliver an impeccable performance, this is a story loosely based on Gangubhai Kothewali, a sex worker who became a brothel madam and pushed for social reforms and legal rights for the women in the Red Light Kamathipura district of Mumbai in the 1960s. She was a formidable woman, who even got an audience with Prime Minister Nehru, and this movie offers up a romanticized but still fairly brutal account of how she was tricked into prostitution and then rose to become an influential leader who strove to help orphans and young women who found themselves in dire straits. 

Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who also co-wrote the script with Utkarshini Vashishtha, this movie manages to simultaneously be very conservative and not. For a dramatic movie about sex work, you are not going to see any nudity, and not even a kiss (well, I guess Julia Roberts would say that was acceptable behavior for a Pretty Woman). But you are going to get a lot of progressive content about the rights that sex workers should have, their unfairly maligned status in society, and the respect and freedom that they are owed. While you may not see any sex in the film, you will unfortunately see a great deal of violence, and while this movie may be set in the 1960s, it certainly feels like a contemporary piece as we haven't made much headway in the intervening decades on deciding how exactly we want to legalize prostitution and give sex workers their due. 

Like all Bollywood films, this movie could do with more judicious editing, but I wasn't bored for a second. The songs aren't memorable, but while you're watching the movie you will certainly be swept away by the spectacle, and the production design to make 1960s Bombay come to life is gorgeous. Bhatt's central performance is sublime, with her transformation from naive young girl to Mumbai slang-slinging, alcoholic madam, perfectly attired in a white sari and sunglasses. She allows for nuance, capturing the fact that this woman wasn't a saint, but she did the best she could given her circumstances and the horrors she had been through. The film has some weird romantic sub-plots that seem out of place, and having a hijra villain is wildly unnecessary and a stereotypically transphobic element in a film that is otherwise trying to be wildly feminist. But overall, this is a compelling tale about a fascinating woman and I'm glad she is finally getting some long overdue recognition.

Badhaai Do: This film is a comedy about Shardul (Rajkummar Rao), who is a closeted gay cop, and Suman (Bhumi Pednekar), a closeted PE teacher. They are now in their thirties so obviously their meddling families are jonesing for them to get married. They have stalled for as long as they can, but their excuses are starting to fall on deaf ears. However, when Suman has to file a report with Shardul when she is being harassed by a stalker (a subplot that is decidedly eerie and a reminder of the many dangers the gay community face in India), he comes up with a neat solution. Why don't they marry each other so their families get off their backs? They will live together as roommates and be free to live their own lives with whoever they want, and their families will be none the wiser. What could go wrong?!

You may have already spotted the flaws in this plan. Needless to say, while the families are overjoyed by the wedding, this is quickly followed by pressure to have children. Many shenanigans ensue, further complicated by the fact that Sumran and Shardul have partners and need to figure out a way to make all of this work. While the first two-thirds of this film mostly play out like a fun farce, the latter third is where your heartstrings will be tugged. This is such a sweet and thoughtful film about the toll it takes on a person to keep their sexuality hidden and the constant fear they live with when they are in a society that rejects their existence. The joy that Shardul experiences when he finally has Sumran, another gay person who can accept him and share the burden of his secret is wonderful, and getting to see their baby steps out in the world as they try to make a life in this deeply conservative society is wondrous. 

This film felt very light and silly but it snuck up on me towards the end. Rao and Pednekar deliver  nuanced and rich performances, portraying these two people as perfectly average everyday Indians, who just happen to be gay. The family drama is awful, but is a very realistic depiction of how these things go in most conservative families (not just Indian ones, of course), and I appreciated the filmmakers not shying away from illustrating the pain and loneliness that so many people endure during this journey. But what I also love about this film is, spoiler alert, it has a very happy ending. We have too many tragic LGBTQ+ stories in the world so let's celebrate one that ends on such a delightfully optimistic and hopeful note.