Lajja film review:
Synopsis:
Lajja is about the plight of the women in this male -dominated world, it preaches the message that the honour and respect of the women has been disparaged right from the times of the Ramayana to the present day.
Plot:
Vaidehi(Manisha Koirala) is an emotionally tormented Indian woman living in New York, USA. Whose womanising husband, Raghu (Jackie Shroff) is a flirtatious 21st century mind set guy and is intimate with other women in front of her. This leads to Vaidehi abandoning her troubled relationship with Raghu and returning to India, together with her unborn child. Shortly afterwards, Raghu is involved in a fatal accident that renders him impotent(can no longer be a father). Whence Raghu finds out that Vaidehi is bearing his child, he asks her to come back. He arranges for her travelling and sets up two of his henchmen to ensure that she does come back . Vaidehi agrees to return and together with those two henchman she goes to the airport and before boarding the plane, contacts her personal doctor. The doctor tells her she is pregnant and warns her that Raghu only wants her back for her child, and she should stay back in India and sort out the entire issue with a solicitor. From this moment Vaidehi tries to back out from going with some excuses, however the henchmen insist she goes. Vaidehi goes to the toilet and from there she escapes from the window and boards and hides in a truck.
Now Vaidehi’s travels begin, where she encounters different forms of social injustices against women on her run, while her husband Raghu is trailing her and setting huge sums of cash for anyone that finds her - The story can be divided into 3 episodes from here on, which exploit the unfair and unjust social norms against women.
Another degree of complexity added to this, is that each socially troubled women she meets has one of the many names of Sita, and Vaidehi is also one of Sita’s name
1: The Wedding :
- Based on the social injustice of dowry
- Maithili (Mahima) is getting wed to her college sweetheart, but her wedding hangs on only one thing - and that is wether her father can pay up 5 lakhs in cash, on that very day.
2: The Ramayana
Based on the double standards of infidelity
Janki (Madhuri Dixit) is a small time theatre actress who is pregnant with her boy friends child, but is not married. She and her boyfriend are planning on getting married, but society provokes her boyfriend into questioning wether the child is really his. He lays down the condition that she aborts her child, that he suspects is not his, and only then they will get married. How does Janki respond ? - watch it and find out!
3: Ramdulari and the computer
- Based on the disrespect against lower caste women
Ramdulari(Rekha) is a mid wife of a village. The daughter of Gajendra Babu (Danny Denzongpa) , an evil high caste leader of the village, is in love with Ramdulari’s son. For this act, it is Ramdulari who has to pay the price!
4: The revolt
-The realisation
The re-invention of the women.
Plot review:
Lajja is a fantastic specimen in recent history, women orientated women are scarcely produced in our film Industry, but even so this women orientated film has to be the most intelligent and original films in the history of Indian cinema. However Lajja is not an art film, it is a wholesome entertainer with a very powerful message.
Lajja is a far cry from a masterpiece, it lacks the emotional intensity of other meaningful cinema that preach social messages(Astitiva, Satya, Shool). Although this is intentional, because as well as being the torchbearer to create awareness for the plight of the women, it is also an immensely entertaining film with extremely hilarious situational comic moments and great dance numbers.
The film’s introductory scenes move at too rapid a pace, failing to add conviction and motive to the beginnings of Vaidehi (Manisha Koirala) travels.
Thereafter the movie flows fantastically well, with the different stories and chapters gradually unfolding. With each incarnation of Sita and story Vaidehi encounters, a sense of a family and emotional bond is created with that person and hence her efforts to provide emotional support and assistance to that person become very realistic and the audience also becomes engaged with that character.. This is very ingenious thinking on the director’s part, as he is introducing each character, with humour, affection and heart warming situations so that the viewer establishes a bond with that character, yet later turns that into sorrow, grief, misery, shock and horror.
I was very impressed with the composition of the plot, its parallels to the ancient epic Ramayana and the entire concept of the four faces of Sita are very intelligently derived . The scenes in the film have been very intelligently designed and narrated in a very path-breaking way. (Alice in wonderland type of narration)
The transition from one episode to another is done extremely intelligently with the setup for the 2nd episode already placed in the previous episode. E.g - (Manisha’s travel to the 2nd episode, is due to a letter she gets from Anil Kapoor in the first episode)
The climax of the film is too far-fetched, it is obvious the director was attempting to end the film on a positive note, however it looked ridiculous. If going to the US was so easy, everyone would be doing it!
All in all, Lajja is simply amazing, its told like an epic, the scenes have innovative design, it is unpredictable, entertaining, shocking and something to think about for us men.
Plot rating - 8.5/10
Summary
Plot rating: 8.5/10
Technical rating: 9/10
Music rating: 10/10
Screenplay rating: 10/10
Overall rating: 9.4/ 10 or 94%
Overall Lajja is simply an amazing film, its style is like Hollywood and its content is Bollywood, and the result, one of the greatest films to be produced in Indian cinema.
PLEASE NOTE: My full review is 9 pages long, and hence it far exceeds the 8000 character limit.
Please read the entire review here:
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