Language: Hindi
(Note: 200 Halla Ho has been released in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. This is a review of the Hindi version.)
“This film is inspired by true events” says the opening text on screen, which comes as a relief since recent years have been peppered with Hindi films based on true events featuring disclaimers insisting that they are not.
Writer-director Sarthak Dasgupta’s 200 Halla Ho is based on a story so startling that it’s hard to believe it is not complete fiction. In August 2004, according to media archives, a mob of about 200 women from a Dalit-inhabited slum in Nagpur descended on a courtroom in the city and lynched the gangster Akku Yadav. Their target had reportedly been raping and variously assaulting the women and girls of the slum for about a decade. Most remained silent, as per news websites. Those who did approach the police were either ignored or reported in turn to Yadav by the law enforcers or sexually abused by them too. There are differing accounts of Yadav’s end, including one from the police claiming he was murdered by men, and that the women are protecting them by assuming responsibility for the crime; the women insist otherwise. Dasgupta and his co-writers Abhijeeet Das, Soumyajit Roy and Gaurav Sharma embrace the latter version of events.
For the record, 200 Halla Ho does not reflect the reality of a majority of the world’s rape survivors who do not finish off their rapists but instead go about the business of survival since that in itself is such a challenge. Their lives are rarely of interest to Indian commercial cinema across languages, which has for long gravitated towards melodramatised fictional accounts of women and/or their family members executing colourful vendettas against rapists. Recent high-profile instances of such films include Vaanmagal from the anthology Paava Kadhaigal (Tamil, 2020), Mom (Hindi, 2017), Puthiya Niyamam (Malayalam, 2016) and 22 Female Kottayam (Malayalam, 2012).
The difference between these films and 200 Halla Ho is that this one is not a figment of a writer’s fantasy. Nevertheless, it is necessary to note that as a society, the stories we choose to tell reflect our commitment to the communities we otherwise choose to ignore. No doubt the women who killed Akku Yadav deserve to have their story told, especially since Hindi cinema has virtually erased Dalit communities from its universe in recent decades.
However, it is revealing that this rare contemporary Hindi film foregrounding Dalits, including Dalit women, is not about believable triumphs, but a believe-it-or-not, eye-popping revenge saga;
it is not about casteism as practised by regular folk whose depiction might cause discomfort to an upper-caste audience, but about a villain so vile and at such an extreme end of the spectrum of evil that we can feel reassured while watching him since he is clearly not “one of us”. So yes, the women who killed Yadav deserve to have their story told, but the Hindi film industry must explain why theirs is the only kind of story it cares for.
Having said that, there can be no question that 200 Halla Ho is important.
Veteran actor Amol Palekar returns to cinema with this film after a lengthy absence. He plays a retired judge here heading a fact-finding committee appointed to probe the lynching of a criminal called Balli Chaudhary (Sahil Khattar).
Rinku Rajguru, who is best known for the Marathi blockbuster Sairat, is cast as Asha Surve, the great hope of the poverty-stricken Dalit community in the slum where she was raised – the one who seems set to escape their life of subjugation. Asha managed to get a college education and is on the brink of a promising professional journey when she decides to stay back and fight for her people against Balli and other oppressors. She is modelled on a woman called Usha Narayane, whose life was the subject of detailed international media coverage in the early 2000s.
In 200 Halla Ho, Asha and Vithhal Daangle (Palekar) clash because he has spent his entire career resisting being described as a “Dalit judge” while she insists on wearing her Dalit identity on her sleeve, reminding him that she does so since society does not allow her to forget her caste for even a second of her existence. His aversion to reductive labelling is justified of course, but her argument against avoiding mentions of their caste background is equally so.
At first, it feels like Vithhal is being used as an instrument to mouth lines that dominant communities tend to favour, such as suggesting that a fair investigation would require his committee to ignore the caste and gender of the persons involved. As the film rolls on though, it turns out that his initial rigidity was actually a mirror to what persons of privilege want to hear from lower castes, women and others who have achieved success, while the opposition from Asha – a Dalit still rooted in the lived experiences of her people since she still resides with them – reflects the reality.
Dasgupta’s film shines in passages when it sticks to naturalistic storytelling, such as that introductory conversation between Asha and Vithhal. It is not as effective when it resorts to speeches. The account of Balli’s crimes is horrifying, the casteism, apathy and machinations of the establishment are plausible, and the balance the film strikes in its position on the mob is particularly crucial – it is not prescriptive, not a glorification of vigilantism, but a warning, as Vithhal puts it at one point, of what might come if the system persists in denying justice to the downtrodden.
(Minor spoilers ahead)
Vithhal’s early attitude is believable, his sudden conversion not so much.
When 200 Halla Ho spends time in the slum, Asha’s community is painted with broad brush strokes (their political representative is especially poorly done), such that Asha is the only one who remains memorable.
The writing is also confused in the courtroom scenes. The conceptualisation of the women’s legal defence in the lower court is so terrible that even an unbiased judge could not possibly have given them a fair judgement, a situation that ends up subtracting from the film’s contention that the women were denied justice. I know, I know, the lawyer (Barun Sobti) does later admit that he is not a top-shot, but those scenes are so weakly written that it feels as if even a bad lawyer – one with intentions as good as this man – could have done better. The subsequent judicial proceedings are more credible, though needlessly diluted by a sudden switch to a Pink-style moment of self-defeating melodrama from one of the accused women that in real life would have had disastrous consequences for her.
(Spoiler alert ends)
200 Halla Ho’s primary cast is strong. The bit part players especially in crowd scenes are not as carefully selected. Palekar’s gentle screen presence stands Vithhal in good stead. Rajguru is as impressive as she usually is. My favourite from among the rest of the actors is Sobti. Despite the fact that his courtroom scenes required better writing, he lends an engaging diffidence to his naïve, well-meaning lawyer act that takes his character out of the realm of an upper-caste saviour.
Despite its uneven storytelling, 200 Halla Ho is significant. The Hindi film industry has by and large been pretending that caste does not exist for almost three decades now. This is an industry which more or less deleted the reference to caste when it remade Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi film Sairat, the story of a Dalit boy and upper-caste girl (Rajguru) in love. Caste politics dominated Sairat, Dhadak kept it at arm’s length.
In such a scenario, it is refreshing to see BR Ambedkar’s image repeatedly in the background and Dalits – as protagonists and satellite players, victims, survivors and saviours – while the narrative plays out in 200 Halla Ho. Dasgupta’s film is far from being as accomplished and intricate as Neeraj Ghaywan’s short Geeli Pucchi in the anthology Ajeeb Daastaans, but it does have a point to make.
Rating: 2.75
200 Halla Ho is streaming on ZEE5.
source https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/200-halla-ho-movie-review-amol-palekar-returns-in-a-startling-unevenly-recounted-true-life-tale-of-dalit-rebellion-9899761.html
