Subhash K Jha revisits the 2003 drama, Escape From Taliban, in a new This Day That Year feature.
A horrific claustrophobia creeps up on us as we sit uneasily watching debutant Ujjal Chattopadhyay’s commercialized interpretation of Sushmita Bandhopadhyay’s autobiographical account of her life as an Islamic wife in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime.
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 the author’s efforts to get away from an extremist and 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 raw hurt and bleeding descent into brutalization and indignity as her dreams of an ideal romantic marriage collapse in a rubble of talibanized trouble.
This, I’m afraid, 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 (not all radicals are all bad, you see) of her treacherous husband, beyond a point, kind thoughts over noble intentions get submerged in a monstrous reality outside the given context.
Though the author’s courageous stand against extremism specially as applied to women in purdah, does lend itself to a fine tale of feminine valour, Escape From Taliban doesn’t leave us 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, we’re left with no choice but to feel a deep sense of dismay and embarrassment at the sheer crassness of the presentation. Women are constantly thrown to the ground and thrashed to a 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 the 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 shelf. So much for biographical authenticity. When the bride arrives in the Afghani village from Kolkata we are transported back to that other shudder provider Shakti: The Power where Karisma Kapoor made a narrow escape from the hands of caste-conscious radicals. There, Shah Rukh Khan jumped in to provide relief with Ishq kameena. There’s no escape from the dreadful inertia that grips this tale of terror during the Taliban.
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, we wonder 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 and thoughts on radical feminism.
In one early sequence, we see 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 sur-less speedbreakers. Specially ridiculous is a mother-daughter song done while Sushmita makes an attempt to escape her in-laws’ outlawry via Pakistan.
A potboiler 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 fire. It’s like trying to light a chulha with soggy wooden sticks. Her makeup is often excessive, the green eyeshadows 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 and infidels are purely inflammatory and should be promptly deleted from the soundtrack before the saffron brigade hears them.
