Bhumika: The Role - Shyam Benegal

An autobiographical inspiration of the 1940’s famous actor Hansa Wadkar who joined the pompous film industry in order to support her on the breadline family, the film goes to show an adapted form of the same as Usha, stunningly played by Smita Patil who takes on solely, the survival of her financially trodden family, after Keshav (Amol Palekar) the family supporting intruder ( who is later her husband) delivers her into an existence surrounding the overwhelming lights, camera and action of Bombay...

Shyam Benegal’s films are internationally acclaimed and largely conspicuous for his “middle cinema” approach to filmdom - his iconic mode that treads along the path of independent cinema and personal expression, by using his coherent cinematic language to speak about subjects of serious importance, question pervasive codes of conduct, introduce new and discordant ideologies, and yet strike extraordinary gold with the mainstream box office. His films extravagantly beheld the attractions of commercial cinema and the avant-garde by the same token. Bhumika, this internationally-marked filmmaker’s fourth film manifests itself in the same striking light, one that displays all, from the typical to bollywood bright colors, to it’s titillating twists, to its showy song and dance performances; also encompassing equally the directors distinguishing ideas, profound themes, and grim representations.

An autobiographical inspiration of the 1940’s Marathi and Hindi famous film actor Hansa Wadkar who joined the pompous film industry in order to support her destitute family, the film shows an adapted form of the same as Usha, stunningly played by Smita Patil . Young and vibrant as a child, she solely takes on the survival of her needy kin, after Keshav (Amol Palekar) the family supporting intruder (who is later her husband) delivers her into an existence surrounding the overwhelming lights, camera and action of Bombay. The film further develops in flashbacks and comebacks that show Usha unorthodoxly strong, as she grows from a famed adolescent artist to a conflicted renowned actress.

Usha’s fruitless and calculating husband (Keshav) pulls the strings of her filmic career by pushing her into rich roles opposite heartthrob co-star Rajan (Anant Nag) only to bring in the buttered bread, while he idles away in unwarranted jealousy and aggression. Her dissatisfactory marital life, intrinsic free-spiritedness and quest to a somewhat undecided individuality, prompts her into two uncontrolled affairs with a poetically cynical director Sunil (aptly played by Naseeruddin Shah) who jilts her in an unforeseen place and time, and a well-heeled capitalist Vinayak, (Amrish Puri) who keeps her as his rightful mistress, where she fleetingly finds her place of respect and seemliness in his rurally located regal household. Her harmony is soon destroyed when she discovers the cost of his household’s respectability and status; one that snatches her of her elementary right to emancipation –. The film thus comes to pitiable conclusion with Usha eventually riding herself to leave her fluctuating search and assertion to independence, for an undeviating end of stinging loneliness and permanent solitude.

A powerful film that writhes through the mind for a long time, it is the film’s dismal ending that penetrates through the most. Usha’s exploration and struggle for something that is constantly undefined and hazy is slightly perplexing through the film. Despite being a woman of superlative strength, she is somehow defenseless with the composite men with whom her affinities arise. Her fate channels through unprecedented turns that are both uncontrollable and intolerable for her, along with her nebulously indistinguishable ideologies that lead to an end that is etched with lasting loneliness and solitary sorrow.

Smita Patil’s prowess as Usha confirms her to be one of the most dynamically impactful actresses of her time. She immaculately alters from a teasing young adolescent to a conflicted mature woman, to a lonesome middle-aged woman all in one film. Amol Palekar’s swing from his general portrayals of light heartedly good natured men to his connotation of an unsympathetic and annoying opportunist also comes through as a fine disclosure.

The film, a winner of two national awards, was the first of the director’s films to shift from his preceding themes of domestic rural life that portrayed the hierarchies of village officials and the feudal oppression of lower statures in society, and went instead to show primarily the subjugation of a modern, asserting Indian woman, amidst a plethora of other feministic & societal issues. Bhumika is one more revealing testimony to Shyam Bengal's works, stalwartly displaying the director’s profundity of thought and vision. It justifies, like all of this other films why he is only second to Satyajit Ray as iconic Indian filmmaker to stride along the international dais of acclaim and recognition.