Irish Film Institute -Bhumika

Bhumika

Shyam Benegal’s The Role begins with what seems like an exerpt from a typical Indian film melodrama. It reveals itself gradually as one of the film’s many skilful pastiches of this form and an introduction to the film-star heroine (finely played by Smita Patil), whose fortunes we follow. She is given to over-dramatisation, resorting to histrionic scenes and filmic dialogue in her private life and much affected by the melodramas she sees on screen. Slowly her own life begins to follow the form of the film scripts in which she participates, and she finds it difficult to maintain the reality of her emotions amidst the illusory nature of her life.At one stage she is described as an idol locked in a mirror. The image of imprisonment is powerfully present in the film, the woman’s fame giving her the freedom only to be the breadwinner in a male-dominated household and escape being in only another sort of trap. A tightly structured narrative is adorned by direction of great visual richness, notably in the generic parodies and party scenes that seem an obligatory aspect of films about filmmaking in whatever language and culture.

Book Tickets

}