Why Shouldn’t Laapata Ladies Be Sent For The Oscars?

I do not understand the massive negative reactions to the news of Kiran Rao-directed and Amir Khan-produced ‘Laapata Ladies’ being chosen for the Oscars as the Indian entry.

Just 29 films made it to the final list. What do you mean by “made it”? Only those films are entered which the producers are willing to enter. Right? How many producers are actually willing to pay the high entry fee of Rs.1.25 lakh to enter their film?

What about crowd-funded films or films produced by a debutant director? And what is so great about the Oscars other than its Hollywood “signature” (or should one call it ‘stigma’?)

‘Lagaan’, also an Amir Khan production and a commercial hit, was eliminated at the final round or close to it in the United States. Why? My guess, and I may be wrong, is because it was just too lengthy and had too many songs which the jury at that end would have tired of, and who knows, may have run out of patience completely before the film had its full run.

From my past experience of attending international film festivals abroad, the festival organisers always advised me to tell my filmmaker friends in India to keep their films short and sweet. But we Indians like to go on and on and on forever since we began making lengthy films and stuffed them with songs and songs and more songs.

The Academy Awards Committee should create some innovative criteria for the jury to choose the films to qualify for the Oscars in the Foreign Language category. In this case, 29 films were entered and all of them were watched and measured by the 13 members of the jury headed by National Award-winning filmmaker Jahnu Barua.

The final selection was ‘Laapata Ladies’. For example, how can a jury sit in judgement on a film like ‘Animal’ and also on Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine as Light’?

On the Jury’s criteria, Barua said “the film should represent India’s social systems and ethos.” In that case, in what way does the film “Animal” represent India’s social systems and ethos we would love to know.

In its citation, the FFSI, the body responsible for the setting up of the jury and the final list of films said, ‘Laapataa Ladies’ is a “film that can engage, entertain and make sense not just to women in India but also universally as well”. In what way does ‘Kalki 2898 AD’ represent Indian’s “social systems and ethos” pray?

‘Aattam’, I agree, could have been a close competitor but its basic premise, namely, an ordinary woman who accuses her theatre group where she is the only woman, of having been molested in her sleep, is universal. Women being molested or women suspecting of having been molested, groped or even raped while asleep or drunk or both is a global issue and not specific to the Indian ethos.

‘All We Imagine As Light’ has already bagged prestige, international honour at the Cannes so it is okay for it to be sidelined. But ‘Laapata Ladies’ with its humour-filled sarcasm in the shape and form of a ‘ghunghat’, the bridal veil is completely Indian, like it or not.

The film has a full-blooded, sarcasm-filled Indian identity. Laapataa Ladies effortlessly, smoothly and with lots of tongue-in-cheek humour manages to bring this to our notice.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote a novel named ‘Noukadubi’ (The Boat Wreck) in 1906. ‘Noukadubi’ is about a boat wreck on a night of storm, rain and thunder that throws the lives of the four main characters out of gear, metamorphosing the relationships into something radically different from what the original plans were.

There are two pairs of newly wedded couples where, since the husbands have never seen their wives’ faces and vice versa and there is a boat wreck while they are sailing home to the bridegroom’s families, there is a big mix-up and all hell breaks loose in the lives of both couples.

The main emphasis of the novel is on the mix-up where the villain is the torrential night of rain, lightning and thunder that wreck the lives of the two newly married couples till…

Tagore used this quadrangular love story to make a strong social indictment of the time on the institution of arranged marriages forced by dictatorial fathers on their obedient, duty-bound sons; the misguided belief in horoscopes to match the pair ideally suited to strike an arranged match; the patriarchal dictates that deny women the truth even when they deserve it.

It was a comment on how the lives of young men and women can be destroyed because during the wedding rituals, they might not have seen each other’s face. It establishes that one boat wreck can destroy all preconceived, and socially conditioned arrangements at one stroke of storm, thunder and rain.

The swapping of brides therefore, can still happen, more than 100 years after it was very much in practice. ‘Laapataa Ladies’ released in 2024 is living proof of this strange custom of brides having to cover their faces, heads, shoulders and torso included, with identically designed red veils. If the bride’s face is covered, how can you blame the husband who picked up the wrong bride?

One husband, Deepak Kumar (Sparsh Shrivastav) began to pine for her terribly because he had grown close to his teenage bride Phool Kumari (Nitanshi Goel) over the three days that he had to stay over at the in-laws after the entire baraat had left, because his presence was needed for some pooja and rituals the girl’s grandmother wanted.

Did they have sex? Such questions are neither asked nor answered in Indian villages even in 2024. But obviously, they did for the husband to have become so smitten.

The other husband was not bothered about the bride Jaya (Pratibha Rangta) except that she was carrying the bridal jewels with her. He wanted them back not knowing that she had already pawned them.

But he did not know that. Jaya had better plans of resurrecting her life. But, for her husband, it was a question of ‘izzat’ as the looming shadow of his first wife having died in a fire hung over him. The screenplay has cleverly woven in the concept of organic farming through this educated and intelligent bride Jaya who has aspirations no one can suspect till she drops the bombshell.

Kiran Rao cleverly shows the completely corrupt station inspector suddenly having a change of heart. How did this magic happen? This is the only melodramatic liberty Kiran Rao takes in the entire story.

When asked in an interview if she would label ‘Laapata Ladies’ a feminist film, Kiran Rao said, “In the film, the men are good too except that one single exception that comes in the end. I did not wish to make a “feminist” film the way we define the genre.

“The film says again and again that patriarchy still rules and women also are a part of it. I wanted to tell this story in a way that women are encouraged to find spaces for themselves, even if it is within marriage or within the family. I did not want to endorse any massive revolution or breaking of ties. Neither did I want to be judgmental. And this seems to have worked.”

And as I commented earlier, what is so great about the Oscars? ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was a very bad and sadistic comment on modern India. ‘Laapata Ladies’ is not.