Let me be honest, Bollywood has set the bar so low that a moderately good movie is a rare exception. Issues like rape, stalking, harassment and abuse have been normalised, even romanticised on the big screen in a way that is cringe-worthy for any sane individual. Alia Bhatt’s recent release ‘Darings’, however, is something different.
Shefali Shah is a phenomenal actress and it is an established fact. Shefali Shah delivering a stellar performance is the norm. What comes across as surprising in Darlings is Alia Bhatt’s on-screen presence and acting skills ‘owning’ the movie. Alia has been one of the very rare good actors from her generation of entitled products of nepotism and she has indeed proven her mettle with performances in Highway, Raazi and Udta Punjab. In Darlings, she has just taken it to the next level, a stellar job throughout.
This review contains spoilers.
‘Darlings’ looks at domestic abuse the way Bollywood has not, so far. In usual productions from the Indian entertainment industry, we either get sick romanticisation or unrealistic ideals. We either get movies that depict harassment, rape, stalking and abuse as “things the hero does to win the heroine’s love”, or we get ideal ‘Adarsh Naaris’ where the protagonist is the permanently wronged, innocent, pure as morning dew, perfect, ‘no-fault in her’ unreal image that further twist the already warped social ideas about the issues.
Alia’s character of Badrunnisa Sheikh in Darlings is not like that. Badrunnisa is a good girl, yes, but Badrunnissa has her own vices. Badrunnisa sometimes cooks carelessly, Badrunnisa uses her female charms on vendors to buy things for cheap, Badrunnissa is silly, selfish, melodramatic and sometimes argues with her husband when he is already tired from work. Badrunnissa is what normal people are. She has her own flaws and ‘Darlings’ does not cover them up to prove its point. The movie does not preach unrealistic ideals.
Badrunnisa’s husband Hamza Sheikh is the regular boyfriend who slowly turns abusive in the course of the marriage. He is not the ‘evil personified’ bad man of regular Bollywood flicks who have evil music accompanying every scene, and who looks and smiles menacingly at their prey. Hamza suffers from his own issues, a bad boss that humiliates him, financial woes, alcohol addiction and in his own flawed, feeble way, does make some efforts to be nice to his wife. However, as abusive husbands often do, he fails at it miserably.
How domestic abuse is normalised by society in general
Netflix’s ‘Darlings’ does not preach. It does not guilt-trip and shame people for doing what they do. Badrunnisa’s neighbours, her local shopkeepers, her friends, and even her mom Shamshunnisa (Shefali Shah) all know that she gets beaten by her husband on a regular basis. They feel bad about it. Her mother suffers knowing that her only child is being beaten mercilessly by the man she loves, she does try to persuade her to leave him, but like abuse victims usually do, Badrunnissa keeps believing that one day, Hamza will change. Shamshu, like a regular Indian mother, despite her outrage, allows her only child to go back to her household and keep making efforts to ‘change’ her husband.
Badrunnisa’s friend, who runs a beauty salon downstairs, hears every single slap, every single kick, yet she keeps going about her business. She helps Badru buy ‘sexy’ outfits when she decides getting pregnant may help change Hamza. She eventually starts asking her customers to ignore the sound of cries and blows from upstairs because she knows it is Badru who has got to decide how much is too much.
Badru gives herself false hope, even if her loved ones try to help, she loves Hamza so much, and loves her silly ideals of love and marriage so much that she keeps believing him after repeated, almost regular abuse. She allows herself to believe Hamza’s false promises, despite knowing better. The denial, the rage, the vulnerability, the acceptance and the final snapping of her sanity are well performed by Alia. Amidst the chaos, dark humour and noise, the mother-daughter duo of Badru and Shamshu deal with their own demons in their own way.
The scene where a broken Badru is about to jump off a hospital window after learning about her miscarriage, and suddenly asks herself, “Why me? It is his fault, he needs to pay”, without uttering a single word, is a few minutes of acting that should set Alia as one of the best among present generation actors. That scene is powerful.
The mental breakdown, the revenge drama, and the ‘unhinged’ behaviour that Badru displays is the dark spiral that follows next. The second half of the movie is a bit weaker than the first, but Alia and Shefali do manage to keep it afloat with their performances.
‘Darlings does its jobs wells’.
