What's the difference between a face and a mask? Unlike the face, a mask can be reconfigured, removed and applied at will. Though men on screen change looks radically for a variety of acts, media poses a challenge to female actors from masking their looks for different roles. By portraying women as heavenly creatures responsible for enhancing male libido, media limits their ability to de-glamorize and freely regulate their appearances. So they end up as chameleons that are inhibited by the pending approval from their surroundings to change their stripes.
According to a list compiled by IMDB, hardly 10 of the 81 most significant changes in actors’ looks in popular cinema have been by women. Namely, Natalie Portman, Nicole Kidman, Ellyn Burstyn, Demi Moore, Charlize Theron, Helena Bohman Carter, Emma Thompson, Hillary Swank, and Cameron Diaz. They have shaved their hair, chapped, freckled and scorched their skin, put on weight, all to literally get into the skin of their characters and made themselves look (conventionally) less attractive. The latest addition to them all comes from unexpected quarters. Bollywood, infamous for it’s assembly line that boxes glamor dolls into arm candy roles, observes Isha Koppikhar in a new avatar called Shabri. Inspired by a true story, she sheds her graces to acquire the looks of a slum dweller that evolves into a legendary gangster. This leads a crusade into realms away from pedicures, silky hairdos and lighter complexions. As Lord Henry once said in The Picture of Dorian Gray, real beauty ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Shabri’s story narrates a greater phenomenon in turbulent times, the rise of female criminality. Not one driven by biological or psychological, but socioeconomic forces. Westernization and industrialization have driven the traditional woman from the domestic space to the productive job sector, (as Shabri runs a flour mill). Added responsibilities, stress and failure to attain their socially defined goals drive frustration and pave the ways of their families into crime. The entry of Shabri represents and strikingly resonates with this rising demographic. She rises from the ashes of poverty forced by survival to climb into the snake pit of political power in the Mumbai underworld.
Shabri destabilizes existing power structures in one of the world’s fastest growing mafia ruled financial capitals, Mumbai. It follows on similar lines as S.Hussein Zaidi's revelation documentary (The Mafia Queens of Mumbai) on how India's most fearsome mob leaders with the likes of Hazi Mastaan and Dawood Ibrahim were actually supported, advised and fiercely dominated by a ring of 13 odd women that chose to remain invisible to the media. Shabri reveals how impoverishment and oppression laid the building blocks to the rise of such women gangsters. Resembling more than 70% of India that lives below the poverty line, she displays an insatiable appetite to survive against all odds. Like the snail Kurtz described in Apocalypse Now, she crawls along the edge of a straight razor and survives. That's her dream, that's her nightmare.
There are two key precursors to the evolution of a species. The former is heartbreak, the latter a denial of the constraints imposed by existing reality. Shabri's character evolves the same way. Through the movie she transforms from a helpless person caring for a family, running an ordinary flour mill to an angel of death with the stone set in her eyes. From despair, agony and mourning dawn consciousness and rage. As Leonardo describes in Inception, to make a dream real, etch out the detail. The meticulous eyes of Lalit Marathe follow this rule and cover every clinical aspect, be it the sewed shreds on her blouse, or her brother stealing her slippers because his own pair is torn and they can’t afford new ones. The camera shots and angles are absolutely novel and brilliant. They show the characters in poignant frames and settings, putting together nothing less than a work of art. Simple objects like a dead tree branch, a window or a balcony are used as props and benchmarks to express the moods of the characters. Feels like the arrival of Louvre in the Mumbai underworld.
Throughout the film, Shabri's presence is more powerful than words, her silence more deafening than screams. As she rests her head on a brick wall while mourning the loss of a loved one, and as her tearful eyes look up in a slant to her captor that takes her home, grief gives way to fury. The viewer can recognize the burning woman torn apart behind the face of the calm assassin. The supporting cast plays their part just right, with the finesse and the pace that fits the mood of the film. The villain's character is especially well developed, as he depicts a variety of emotions, not just negative tones, leading him to become one more of the characters in the film rather than just a bad guy. Shabri's relationship with Murad is very well distanced, as well as crafted. Their platonic coexistence has romantic roots, but ones that remain unspoken of. There are many tender moments in the film where bringing closure to the scene would set the film on the path of a commercial potboiler. However as a maestro would, the director holds back, allowing the viewer's imagination to execute the task.
A fascinating character in the film is Inspector Quazi. Various psychology theories suggest that one of the deepest roots to human motivation is that of seeking stimulation, and Quazi fits it perfectly. A man of outstanding capabilities who is bored with the mundane routine of his job, he strives to reinvent his job such that he may be amused and entertained. And he lives his life with the pursuit of unleashing chaos, aspiring to keep the reins of all the players of the game in his own hands. He doesn't seek a stable equilibrium, for that brings him boredom. He tries to bring the underworld network to unstable solutions, where he has planned the next move to apparently stabilize it.
What sets this movie a class apart is that the brutality and action is not driven to over kill. It makes a gritty as well as a crisp viewing experience. There isn’t an abundance or overflow of blood, nor any loudness in the expressions of those in it. Fights are swift and real, not orchestrated, nor elaborate. The colors are faded and blood is dark red, not vermillion. Gunshots are snappy, and deaths of important characters devoid of melodrama. From the waters lapping against the shore at low tide at the docks, to the hand rubbed polish on Rawat’s vintage Jaguar, Shabri is a vividly constructed original script as well as a well narrated tale. Unlike many others, it does not end where the audience starts to leave the theater. It ties up the loose ends, relates to how life proceeds for each of the significant characters, and how the dark night gives way to dawn. The aftertaste it leaves behind is not necessarily sweet, but one that perfectly whets the viewers’ appetite.
Irrespective of the movie's box office collections, or the awards it receives through ceremonial moulds, what stands apart is Shabri's contribution to cinema. She gives viewers an insight into the causes behind female criminality in urban India, as Charlize Theron did in Monster for women’s crimes and prostitution in USA.
The action role in a saree also makes Shabri a cultural icon. Since gender equality and feminist themes in media originated in western nations, most action roles enacted by women in Bollywood have been in western attires (with the added flexibility in physical movement). But unlike the many who dress as Lara Croft to depict an action performance, Shabri kicks, shoots, jumps, and runs in a tattered saree. Being the first female actor that embraces her action role with an Indian identity, she doesn't imitate a fighting man. She's a woman that fights as herself. A great directorial effort by newcomer Lalit Marathe and produced by the Quentin Tarantino of Indian cinema, Ram Gopal Verma.
With this performance, Isha Koppikhar challenges the corridors of power in Bollywood just as the fictitious Shabri does to her male counterparts. In a land where men pursue fair and handsome and women's dowry rates correlate with the sales of fair and lovely creams, she displays the courage to add more layers of darkness to her complexion. In an industry that delivers cliché roles where actresses are dressed in either sexy or western gear (or both) serving the purpose of dancing around the screen while taking a break from the usual story, Shabri feels like a fresh breeze. She could evoke mourning for the demise of porcelain beauty, or celebrations for the arrival of character and essence in a woman. But her charms invade our senses as the touch of raindrops on a heated brick wall. Unnerving, yet soothing and memorable.
