Listen to the premise of Bahishkarana. A village. An affluent upper caste president (Obviously!) for gram panchayat. A lower caste rebel-ish protagonist who loves the President’s concubine. Hero is a fighter of caste atrocities as well.
Such an interesting storyline social drama that can tell the story of an era and its people and their politics are completely wasted in this plot based social drama that timidly serves the plot more than the social issues that can bring the real and relatable drama to life.
Bahishkarana (meaning out casting in Telugu) is set in 1997 of Guntur’s Peddapalli. Darshi is a wingman of President Shivayya garu (played by Ravindra Vijay) who walks (or, is he made?) 10 feet away from Shivayya. Anjali as Pushpa is a concubine to Shivayya, who willingly enters into this business of prostitution. But, the convincing of the audience is done only through the not-so-brilliant writing, and never through her actions, except a fight in the mud. (of course, how else can we show that she is a no bullshit-taker?)
Anjali gets the major redemptive heroic arc. She get to have a moment of splattering blood on her face. She gets to play a morally grey-ish character that quickly turns society’s standards of white. This is where the writing feels half-done.
The writing done by Mukhesh Prajapathi is a plot based murder thriller dressed as a social drama of caste atrocities. We need not to make a story entirely a social drama. That becomes a social commentary. We have editorial columns for that. I don’t expect the cinema to become that medium. However, when we see a story happening in a certain time period and certain social setting, it is not a crime to expect certain authentic writing that reflects life and its emotions, not just set designs of rich and poor in a rural setting.
It is appreciative of Zee5 to pick up rural social dramas. A month back it released Paruvu, it was also a thriller weaved around honour killings. This time Zee5 came up with Bahishkarana. It might be a half-cooked social drama, but nonetheless, they are producing stuff related to social dramas.
Bahishkarana is now streaming on Zee5.
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