Completely Cringeworthy: Gangubai Kathiawadi

Gangubai Kathiawadi

Completely Cringeworthy

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movie Gangubai Kathiawadi is based on the life of the prostitute and mafia queen Gangu bai.

Sensitive Topics like prostitution and the state of red light districts and Gangubai’s demand for legalisation of prostitution needed much more aware, educated, gender alert, sensitive, balanced and less sexist handling.

Bhansali through the film amply displays his lack of sensitivity and calibre for handling the same… it seems that it is his blind spot…

In the climactic scenes Gangu bai announces that if there are no red light areas and prostitutes the social fabric of India will be torn apart. Men will become murderers and rapists!

Wait! What space is Bhansali in?

Not only in its content, as far as direction is concerned, the film is a crass, awkward, boring compilation of scenes - I wouldn’t even call it badly directed. One scene randomly follows another, characters come and go with their own elusive logic, suddenly a dead prostitute is being adorned as a bride and the others are being ordered to tie her legs tight or men will open them…

Amidst the squalor of the prostitutes stands the pristine glamour of Alia Bhatt who was a bad choice to begin with. By the end she has mastered delivering the dialogues broadly on the method of constantly alternating between the simpering voice and the hard commanding voice of the kothewalli. This repeated alternation is supposed to pass off as acting.

The aesthetic of Bhansali will make you wonder how he ever made films like Devdas, Hum Dil De … etc

Please Mr Bhansali your attempts of applying your signature aesthetics of symmetrically placing candles, to the squalor, poverty and helplessness of the red light district of Kamathipura only serves to show how as a director there are some themes that you would do better to avoid. Not everything is about candles and Garba.

The script is full of crass jokes, innuendoes, the characters in the movie keep laughing at these jokes and the audience is left cringing.