Ankur (1974)

This review originally appeared at Geek of All Trades; it's reproduced here pretty much as is.

अंकुर

I picked up Ankur ("The Seedling") relatively early in my exploration of the career of Shabana Azmi, far and away my favorite actress in Hindi film. Ankur was Shabana’s first film, and earned her the first of her five National Film Awards. Directed by Shyam Benegal, it is often credited as one of the bellwethers of the Indian art film movement known as “parallel cinema,” in which both Benegal and Shabana are central figures.

At the heart of the film’s story is the clash between bourgeois entitlement and old-fashioned country values, a familiar story of relationships shaped by the inherent imbalances of class and caste. But the story is told on an intensely personal, intimate scale.

The result is that instead of political diatribe, the film presents a compelling close read of the interaction between two broken people from very different worlds. Surya (Anant Nag) is an aspiring urban intellectual who, instead of going to college as he would prefer, is exiled to the management of his family farm. Married to a young bride who will not join him until she comes of age, Surya finds himself attracted to his household servant Lakshmi (Shabana). Lakshmi, married to a drunken, unemployed, deaf-mute potter, resists his advances at first. But when her husband is caught stealing and disappears without a trace, she submits to Surya, becoming his lover.

The story’s progress is from there somewhat predictable. Surya’s wife arrives and, proving to be more assertive than Surya probably expected, exiles Lakshmi from the house. Meanwhile, Lakshmi’s inevitable pregnancy provides Surya the opportunity to treat her with selfish cruelty, belying the tenderness he had promised her during his seduction. In the film’s climax Lakshmi forces Surya to face his weakness and hypocrisy, but it is not entirely a triumph for her.

It is not entirely clear whether Lakshmi is indeed attracted to Surya, or uses him only to provide her with the child that she so desperately wants. The latter interpretation lends a subtlety of message to the film, which would otherwise be a straightforward tale of the oppression visited by the landed classes upon their serfs. Surya has no redeeming features at all, but Lakshmi entered the relationship with open eyes, and should have known that Surya’s promises were empty. Like her husband, and like Surya’s friend who bets – and loses – his wife in a drunken card game, Lakshmi gambled her reasonably secure circumstances on long odds. That she ends the film bearing the weight of her own guilty conscience is no tragedy. Ankur’s title represents a beginning, a promise of hope and growth and a future. But the film offers happy endings for no one.

Ankur is sad and beautiful, shot in earthen reds, yellows, and browns. Shabana’s performance is compelling, if coy and manipulative, driven more by her eyes than by the delivery of her lines; her voice is high and thin, lacking the richness and command that characterizes it in her more recent films. But, oh my, was she ever gorgeous. I fell in love with the mature Shabana, approaching fifty, knowing lines creasing her eyes and mouth, world-weary, confident, and powerful. But I can see why Shyam Benegal and all of India would have fallen in love with the young Shabana. Her body was lithe and strong and graceful; her face expressive and feminine. In Ankur, she demonstrates her strength pounding spices and carrying water. She demonstrates her allure as well, for much of the film submitting placidly and knowingly to Surya’s hungry gaze. In one of the best sequences, Surya surreptitiously watches Lakshmi bathing, and although the scene is modest – Lakshmi is fully clothed – it is also powerfully erotic. The scene offers a complex statement about the objectification of women (and servants, and people of low caste) that operates on many levels. Surya’s gaze is lecherous and inappropriate, a pointed symbol of the imbalance of power that exists between these two characters. But even an audience disapproving of Surya’s lascivious stare is invited to enjoy Lakshmi’s lovely sensuous movement just as much as he. In these circumstances it is difficult to keep a clinical distance from the themes underlying the film, and the audience becomes a participant in its struggle.

There are more lovely stills from Ankur here. 

Comments

[James - Familienrecht Rechtsanwalt Stuttgart]

Ankur is literally one the best Indian movies I have ever seen – actually, it ranks as one of my most favorite films of all time. There is something to be said about the Indian Film Industry – while it has altogether crumbled and become wildly glamorous and crass.

[RajaRathinam]

Whare I can download Ankur Movie?