He and She. Mars and Venus. Blue and Pink. Nature has molded us into different forms but it was society that chose to put one before the other. The world has seen the era of oppression, the era of depression and finally the era of rebellion is dawning! “PINK,” the recently released movie about three slut-shamed girls, is one of the structures ushering in that era.
The movie is centered on three young girls – Meenal Arora (Taapsee Pannu), Falak Ali (Kriti Kulhari) and Andrea (Andrea Tariang) who unknowingly fall victims to the most devious of events after they crash a bottle on the antagonist’s face at a rock concert that leads to them being propped up in court and their character questioned. The director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, has done well to bring out the intricate characters in the film – especially that of the sinister looking Deepak Sehgal (Amitabh Bachchan) who comes to the rescue of the girls. How the girls journey through their emotions of tension, fear and finally courage as they fight the patriarchal society, hell bent on making them look guilty for something they have not done, is what the story is about.
Now you might wonder why Roy didn’t choose a leading lady to cast for the lawyer cum savior, but one look at ‘Big B’ portraying that role to its zenith and his baritone silencing the courtroom– and you know it makes sense. After all this is a wake up call for the men of our country in particular, and a woman playing the lawyer out to save girls would have been sidelined as another “feminazi” instead of making the impact that it has made. On the other side, Taapsee is a revelation as the hard-hitting Meenal. This performance is definitely the kohinoor to her career crown. With such amazing portrayals, even by the bad guy Rajveer (Angad Bedi), a plot that thickens every moment and the all-loved courtroom drama, this is surely the movie that Bollywood has been waiting for. From the marketing stunts of Bachchan writing letters to his granddaughters, to the video on the innermost thoughts of girls voiced by that same baritone to the actual movie itself, “Pink” is the game changer, the wave maker.
Hindi Cinema has always taught us that the stalkers are the heroes. If you are rich enough and if you are handsome enough, you can just about get away with anything. No wonder this mindset has trickled down to generations of youth who have done exactly that – stalked, threatened and finally raped a girl to “win her over”. Not anymore because guess what, when a girl says no, she means NO. Ab Samjhauta Nahin.
Watch “PINK” movie public response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnEa55miYws