CINEMA VIGILANTE
In 1984, I wrote Lights Out, a play based on a friend’s eyewitness account of a brutal gang-rape in Mumbai. In the play, six people in an apartment watch a woman being raped in the neighbouring carpark, but take no action.
Using this foundation, Govind Nihalani’s debut Marathi film, Ti Ani Iter (She and the Others), updates the story with screenplay and dialogue by Shanta Gokhale. A young and affluent couple invite friends over to their apartment, but their evening is disrupted by a woman’s screams from a nearby building. The guests insist on investigating, cell phones are used to record the incident and the police are called in. Yet troubling questions trail their good intentions. The 90-minute film, starring Sonali Kulkarni and Subodh Bhave, was released in late July 2017, to receptive audiences. Last week, Nihalani, Gokhale and I had an e-mail exchange about the film. Excerpts:
Manjula: Are the events of Lights Out still relevant?
Nihalani: Absolutely. The play was about the conflict between an individual’s desire to act as a lawabiding citizen and the insecurity such action might entail. Today, that situation’s become extremely acute.
Manjula: Why Marathi?
Nihalani: This is the most alive and open cinema space in the country today. It has a well-developed theatre tradition that has produced a large number of excellent actors. The availability of high-quality talent was a major factor in my decision.
Manjula: How has Mumbai changed since the seventies?
Nihalani: In some aspects, society has become rough, insecure and violent; in other aspects, it has
grown courageous, aware and bold. I see this film as reflecting the complexity of our times.
Manjula: The film’s ending is ambiguous. The couple decide they must follow up and protest the violence, but the threats and fear linger till the final frame. Why did you prefer that note of uncertainty?
Nihalani: It takes courage to fight injustice. I want to believe in those who have that courage. But there are real dangers, real personal risks. We see that in the media all the time. I wanted to make it clear that taking a stand is not an end in itself. It’s just the beginning.
Manjula: As a prolific writer and playwright, why this project?
Shanta: The only reason I said yes was because Govind asked me.
Manjula: Would you say the film is true to your vision?
Shanta: Close enough. The play confines the action to one room, it’s speech-heavy and its characters are one-dimensional. I felt the need to add layers to the characters, to create new situations that would allow the outside world to come in and the inside world to go out. For instance, human trafficking: it has been in the news for years. So that angle came in almost without conscious thought.
Manjula: What about the transition from English to Marathi?
Shanta: I write both languages with ease but I have never written about non-Marathi characters. So creating them for the film was the most natural thing for me.