Bol Movie Review

            It is not Halla bol. It is just Bol and a shockingly powerful tale at that. At a time when our cinema is marketing an urban modern social order; at a time when our cinema celebrates the urban stereotypes here comes a shocker from across the border.

It is an experience to watch a film with absolutely no input on the cast and crew their reputes their shortcomings .  Blissfully unaware of what they bring on board and being introduced to a completely different mileu- Bol is a viewing experience.  Interestingly it is a narration with no respite and yet engrossing.  It reflects a culturally retrograde social order or perhaps at a layer about a collective that has still its prejudices about the transgender and also the girl child.

            Many years ago Kalpana Lajmi made an attempt with Darmiyaan .  Here the issue is dealt in far more detail and with a social system that seems even more orthodox.  You are given a look  into the Greg Mortenson world of Three Cups of Tea at the outside and a peep into the goings on within  of a Khaled Hosseini’s  A Thousand Splendid Suns.

            The narration begins with Zainab addressing a communication to the President with a death wish: to be hanged to death and invite the media.  At the gallows  she tells her story, her struggle, her defiance, her failure- her success.  A product  of a  traditional crumbling family headed by a Hakeem (Manzar Sehbai) she lives with a dominating dad (old values) her many sisters.  The family hesitatingly welcomes a hermaphrodite sibling and constantly hide him from the angry patriarch. Impoverished the family lives in a huge mansion that surely has seen better days and walls that remain to tell tales . Zainab returns home after a short and unsuccessful marriage. As the family goes through various turmoils she takes up cudgels with her unrelenting father: talks of the need for family planning, education, challenges the understanding and interpretation of the Holy book and populist Islamic stances. The young sibling grows within the four walls of the house –unaware of the big bad world outside and fall a prey soon after he is introduced to it. This shatters them all but then they react differently.  The father however decides the final  fatal step.

The second half of the film is entirely dedicated to the cause of women equality or at least the pleading for a just world. The father simply refuses to change with time , gets sucked into the vortex of his own moribund mind set, even as falls a prey to some shocking behavioural challenges including having to sire a girl child for a sex worker Meena  (Iman Ali) who is always quoting from Pakeezah.  There is friendly neighbour  to introduce the Shia- Sunni conflict at the social level where members from the family fall in love. Atif Aslam is the do-gooder neighbour with a miniscule role in the film ( a kind that our directors would reserve to a Vinod Mehra or a Atul  Kulkarni) .

The climax is about how she is punished for patricide   and her plea for giving women their rightful place in society.  Albeit in a different context but strangely similar Khaleed Hosseini pleaded for note books and pencils as ‘tools of socio economic well being’  Bol demands exactly that and routes it from struggle to success.  Watch it for some heart crunching moments, some sensitive performances and stay away if you want fun and laughs.

L.Ravichander.