Escape From Taliban Hindi Movie
Claustrophobia is the predominant emotion one feels while watching director Ujjal Chattopadhayay's commercialised interpretation of an Indian woman's autobiographical account of her life as a wife in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Is this film true to its source material? Or is Chatterjee guilty of an appalling escapism that takes the material beyond the adventure story inherent in author Sushmita Bandhopadhyay's efforts to get away from a tyrannical regime?
The first thing that strikes us about this well intended though finally exasperatingly mediocre true-life saga is the rugged terrain.
Chatterjee has chosen his locales well. The rocky dry and unrelenting landscape echoes the protagonist's hurt and bleeding descent into brutalisation and indignity as dreams of romantic marriage collapse in rubble of Taliban trouble.
This is as far as the praise can take us.
Just like the true-life heroine Sushmita (Manisha Koirala) who's finally taken to the barbed border by a benevolent uncle of her treacherous husband, beyond a point noble intentions get submerged in a monstrous reality outside the context.
Though the author's courageous stand against extremism specially as applied to women in the veil lends itself to a fine tale of feminine valour, Escape From Taliban doesn't leave one with much room to feel kindly about its high-minded raison d'etre.
The treatment of the volatile subject is so tacky and the whole feminist subtext of the narrative so botched by melodrama that one is left with no choice but to feel a deep sense of dismay at the sheer crassness of the presentation.
Women are constantly thrown to the ground and thrashed to pulp by men in Pathan suits and menacing sneers, both of which are worn as Talibanic emblems of macho oppression. The sneering brigade includes television and theatre actor Aly Khan who (besides the Pathan suit and sneer) sports an indecipherable accent.
The ladies all huddle together in extra-bright salwar-kameez and flaming dupattas, some of them obviously straight from the shelves of fancy stores. So much for biographical authenticity!
When the bride arrives in the Afghani village from Kolkata one is transported back to that other recent shudder provider Shakti: The Power where Karisma Kapoor made a narrow escape from the hands of caste radicals.
There, Shah Rukh Khan jumped in to provide relief with the song Ishq Kameena. But there's no escape from the dreadful inertia that grips this tale of terror.
The most radical element in Escape From Taliban is embedded in the idea rather than its execution.
The action, if one may call it that, is so inexpertly done that one wonders how a real-life drama can plumb to such deplorable depths in search of cheap thrills. The lapses in continuity add to the careening chaos of ideas on radical feminism.
In one early sequence one sees the fuming protagonist in her dispensary exchanging womanly sympathy with another betrayed bride from Kolkata. But her decision to start medical care for women comes much later in the script!
The songs serve as a ceaseless snarl of tuneless speed breakers. Especially ridiculous is a mother-daughter number done while Sushmita makes an attempt to escape her in-laws' outlawry via Pakistan.
A pot-boiler version of reality masquerading as social comment? Or a social statement masked in the conventions of the box office?
Either way there's no escape for the audience from Escape From Taliban. The performances range from a snarl to a sneer, with grimaces and hiccups thrown in for the women.
Manisha Koirala tries hard to suffuse her pivotal role with life. It's like trying to light a fire with soggy wooden sticks. Her makeup is often excessive, the green eye shadow clashing unevenly with her shocking-pink outfits. Manisha is capable of much more than this, given the correct vehicle.
Some of the extremist utterances about 'kafirs', or infidels, are purely inflammatory and shoul
