Film Review: STREE (2018)

After getting a few positive reviews, I finally watched Stree (2018), a hatke horror-comedy film. The film was different primarily for the cause of women and secondly for the film’s location in a small town of Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh. I was happy to see this remote, historical place being given cinematic space because such remote places bring new geographies, new outlooks, attitudes towards issues, new elements and themes to Bollywood films. On the one hand, these films give an impression that there’s not a great difference to the lives we live in cities/urban spaces. The inroads done by Television and Internet are baffling and whether in towns, villages or cities, we are all obsessed by and consume the same news channels, soap operas, music competitions, youtube videos. On the other hand, watching the rural, undeveloped spaces in these films makes me uncomfortable, for despite Independence, our villages have not at all changed in certain aspects. Be it Dev D, Bareli ki Barfi, Tanu weds Manu, such films show our villages, sleepy, dusty towns where there is a different intensity to the issues we face in urban areas or the issues themselves are hitherto not explored in other films. That is why Stree felt different in a few aspects but it failed to explore certain other complexities worth mentioning.

If the location of the film was new, another positive aspect of the film is its screenplay laden with humor and its clever play on words like ‘swayamsevi’. By taunting the ascetic, celibacy aspects of strong men, the word - swayamsevi as someone not relying on others for sexual needs, gains a new meaning. Rajkumar Rao and Tewari have displayed good acting skills and have adopted the local diction very well. Vicky is shown from the beginning frame as an athletic, fearless, modern guy (he smokes and drinks) and who is naturally gifted in tailoring. His fearless attitude results in him inviting Stree on a party night. Later in the film, we discover that Vicky will have to save the village from the ghost.

Deviation from the norm - In Bollywood films, we are used to seeing men of upper castes (read Brahmins, Thakurs, Bhumiyaars) or of certain class like individuals of aristocratic or bourgeois descent as saviors. These saviors are shown to have a huge impact on the ordinary masses and often become messiahs of change and leaders of future. Such heroes are always-often sanctified, impeccable as they seem to be and then, they are treated as demi-gods. History often teaches us to treat them with dreadful respect and we learn to brush their unknown traits, vices and other wrongs under the carpet. Who would be willing to accept any immoral acts of Shivaji, Gandhiji, Jayalalitha etc.? If the town is a small collection of communities or a symbolic, miniscule reproduction of a nation, can someone born illegitimately be given the task of rescuing the abducted villagers and exorcising the female ghost? What is different in this Amar Kaushik directed movie is this very criterion - casting an illegitimate child as a savior. This deviation from the norm is a welcome change from our traditional heroes/saviors as the resolution to the crises in Chanderi cannot emerge from a normal individual but from an artist of illegitimate birth.

The inside-outside dichotomy – In Stree, the eponymous ghost occupies an old fort, isolated and situated on the outskirts of the town, just like many brothels on or beyond the periphery. The female ghost haunts the males of the town by abducting them at night during a yearly, religious 5 days festival. Horror films are purported to create fear for which the dichotomy ‘inside/outside’ is often used. In Stree too, the ghost’s presence (something coming from outside) creates fear within the residents of Chanderi. The dichotomy is significant because though on the surface, the fear psychosis is of losing men, deep inside, it’s the fear of losing one’s manhood. It is like saying; man without his manhood is reducing him to nothing. Further, an abducted person may also become ghost-like (Jaana). People thus fear transgression as the abducted men are stripped naked, lose their manhood and are no more considered ‘normal’. The fear psychosis works despite the apparent harmless characteristics of ‘Stree’ - stupid, obedient, literate and she doesn’t force others. She has all the ‘good’ characteristics and the only issue is that she is a ghost and abducts men. Vicky is wise enough to realize this and his decision of not killing the ghost (Stree) but only neutralizing her powers is an apt way to treat a woman who was never respected in her life. In restoring respect to the un-married woman as a socially unacceptable female, his act becomes truly heroic. At the end, we realize that the spectral presence needs nothing more than love and respect and in fact, if given, the ‘Stree’ could eventually protect the village.

Call for action stance – The film has a call for action stance as it invites us (men) to think about our attitudes and outlook towards women. The men are shown to undergo restrictions often imposed on women. They always need to be accompanied as ‘Stree’ attacks men wandering alone at night. Then, men are taught not to heed attention to any woman calling out their name. It does make one laugh to see that men are compelled to go out in saris for fear of getting abducted. These scenes try to sensitize men on certain practices, behaviors imposed and expected of women. The film makes an appeal to change our patriarchal mindsets and this is shown through the ghost’s story. The un-married woman is an object of sexual desires of men. In the film, as the writer of the book informs, when the un-married woman had sought a union with her lover, the village men, not willing to permit a love relation between the two, had ruthlessly killed the two lovers. By desiring, the woman becomes a willing subject; and her murder suggests suppression of woman’s desires at the hand of men folk. It suggests that they are the sole share holders of a woman’s libidinal economy and that any change has to be authorized by them. No wonder that the ghost comes back every year for her unfulfilled desires, in search of her wish to consummate her relationship with her lover. Interestingly, the fact that the character Stree, - which means ‘the female’ in Hindi, doesn’t have any particular name suggests that it implies all biological women irrespective of any other identity markers. The perpetual return of the ghost signifies her quest for fulfillment of her desires, her want of sexual freedom. It means she will come back as long as her desires continue to be repressed. The underlying message of the film is therefore to treat women respectfully irrespective of their class, caste, occupations, religion, etc., and urges us (all the males) to be aware of the consequences of ill-treatment to women.

Despite this underlying message, it would have been nice to see a layered cinematic representation of the issue concerning respect towards women. The general discourse about women empowerment is often governed by an appeal to the male community. Males are asked to respect women and treat them as equals. For one, the film is crowded by men characters and except for Stree and friend’s mother, hardly any other woman occupies any space. Then, the film doesn’t do any justice to show the myriad struggles of women and different ways of oppression at work in society. Film’s message and the resolution it suggests for gender becomes uni-dimensional.