Antardwand

Raghubir Sahi (Raj Singh Choudhary) is a twenty something Bihari boy who is studying in Delhi. He has been in a serious relationship with a girl of his age, Siya. As many a young couple, Rags and Siya find themselves pregnant. The two of them decide to get married since they are deeply in love. Siya is Punjabi, a fact which Raghu’s father, Madhukar Sahi (Vinay Pathak) is not going to be too pleased about. However, Raghu is sure that he wants to take this forward and is willing to take on his Dad for this.


Parallely in Raghu’s village, Kanti, somewhere in Bihar, Mahendra Singh (Akhilendra Mishra) has approached Madhukar Sahi with an alliance for his daughter, Janki (Swati Sen) but is rudely rejected by Madhukar. Mahendra is willing to pay any amount of dowry to get Raghu married to his daughter But Madhukar is not one to budge. He has already given his word to a close friend, Jagdish Babu. However, he is not prepared for the shock that is awaiting him in the form of Raghu informing them about Siya. He does not tell his father about the pregnancy though. Madhukar obviously asks him to take the abortion route out and close the chapter. But Raghu is hell bent on getting married only to Siya. He leaves home that very day.

But Mahendra Singh has other plans. He is not willing to take this rejection. More importantly, he considers it as a personal insult and has Raghu kidnapped and taken to the village to get him forcibly married to Janki. They use all sorts of methods to force him to accept the wedding proposal but when he does not budge, they get him drunk and married off forcibly. Janki is obviously not pleased with this but has no say in the matter. Nevertheless, Raghu refuses to consummate the marriage. The best efforts of Janki prove futile and eventually the family has to resort to getting our man drunk once again and insinuating his virility to get the desired reaction from Raghu.

Antardwand forces one to think and wonder about all perspectives. How is Janki to blame for any of this. Is Raghu correct in releasing his anger onto her? If not, who else does he look to since he is locked up in one room as a “Mehmaanji” who is refusing to accept what the host is asking him to do? What does a mother do in a case like this where she knows that her husband is grossly wrong but is helpless because of societal norms of not going against her husband no matter what. How does a brother react to this situation? Is he supposed to “protect” his sister OR protect his father’s “self respect”?

The movie got the award for the best film on social issues at the 55th National Awards. I would say rightfully so. The movie is filled with messages primarily against bride groom kidnapping, a practice that we in the metros are largely unaware of but is supposedly rampant. There are other issues also covered such as education for the girl child, dowry and marriages in rural India. The movie is filled with powerful performances from Vinay Pathak and especially Swati Sen who puts on a fabulous performance as Janki. There is a sequence between Janki and Mahendra when she decides she has had enough and decides to leave the house. The expressions between the 2 are actually fabulous to say the least. Raj Singh Choudhary continues to play a part of the timid, spineless young man that he kind of played in Gulaal. He fails to impress me but that’s probably due to the kind of role that he plays.

Sushil Rajpal’s direction is also pretty much up there. But a lot of the credit goes to the fact that the cast is a strong bunch of people who would otherwise be associated with Theatre. There are distinct chinks also. At least the print that was playing @ PVR Mulund had bad sound editing and bad overall editing as well. The item number I thought was quite unnecessary. But Kailash Kher is fabulous in his rendition of “Tanha Tanha Tanha”. A very hard hitting movie for sure. Extremely serious and definitely arty. Watch it only if you are fine with a movie that is quite in your face. I give it 7 on 10.