Chingari Hindi Movie
Drop a tiny box of vermilion on the ground and brief an actress to emote effectively to bring out the angst, pathos and rage over the loss of her lover and would be husband, killed by her exploiter. If she can do it for full four minutes, all the while the camera not flinching away from her, she is an actress who ought to be carrying an award home. Sushmita Sen does this and much more in Kalpana Lajmi’s Chingari to stake claim to the best actress award for 2006. The movie might have busted at the box office, but Sushmita has run away with the accolades even before the award ceremonies. Be it the scene where she spews venom on her exploiter, the scene in which she confesses her innermost feelings to her lover, or the scene in which she waits in vain for her man to turn up to marry her, she is a class act beyond doubt.
Kalpana Lajmi, true to the genre of movie she makes has chosen a subject for Chingari that appears as news item in the papers. Chingari is a story of three Ps: A prostitute, a postman and a priest. The prostitute, Basanti (Sush), despite selling her body to hundreds over and again, feels love for a kindhearted postman, Chandan Mishra (Anuj Sawhney). But a priest named Bhuban Panda (Mithun Chakravarthy) who is a demon in the human form and a regular at the lalbatti (the redlight area) where Basanti works and stays, feels betrayed by this love. This fake godman thrives on the ignorance and apathy of the people to exploit them sexually and financially. The considerable power that Bhuban Panda wields as a priest, allows him to lord over the village of Rangpur. He uses his power to stop the impeding marriage of the postman and the prostitute. But the marriage is important to Basanti for she wants to give a good upbringing and life to her daughter.
Mithunda’s acting as the terrible Bhuban Panda is awesome and Anuj Sawhney as a postman is brilliant. Still the film struggles at the box office primarily because in India, women centric films are difficult to be sold to the moviegoers. You can count on your fingertips this type of movies that have succeeded at the box office. Such movies may get critical acclaim but would struggle at the box office. That’s how Rudaali has been and that’s how this is going to be. And the movie is stuck between being arty and commercial. Probably it’s a bit lengthy too.
All said and done Chingari is a movie worth watching, for the sterling performance of Sushmita Sen. She is poised to sweep the awards ceremonies of 2006, unless some actress comes up with a better performance in the remaining days of the year. And that seems very unlikely.
