Set in the mythic killing fields of rural Bihar, where nothing works except the law of the lawless, Antardwand takes the firm and gripping route to expose a hinterland headline: the kidnapping of marriageable boys by desperate fathers of wannabe brides. This was a prevalent malpractice in Bihar until some years ago. Not so much anymore.
Debutant director Sushil Rajpal’s film works more for its deeper resonances than just the surface sincerity. It is not so much the sensational value of the theme (dulha utha gaya) that makes Antardwand watchable as the treatment of the layers of socio-political irregularities and caste aberrations that generate a society of anarchy where kidnapping an aspiring groom is serious business.
The narrative is punctuated with bouts of savage humour. When the Delhi University civil-service candidate Raghuveer (Raj Singh Choudhury), with a pregnant girlfriend (Himanshi), is kidnapped just yards away from his parents’ home in rural Bihar, his confoundedness and rage at the bizarre confinement is expressed in bouts and spasms of indigence.
The director knows the milieu well. He doesn’t waste time exploring rural Bihar just because he has chosen to film his story on location. Incidentally, Prakash Jha, who has never shot any of his Bihari films in Bihar should take note of how steeply the level of authenticity rises in Antardwand when the characters are placed in their true habitat.
The narrative never loses its momentum. Rather than opt for a dry docu-drama tone, director Sushil Rajpal has chosen to format the film as a thriller. The pace from the moment of Raghuveer’s kidnapping to his escape is largely relentless. The second half of the plot gets more introspective, as it becomes the story of the humiliated bride (newcomer Swati Sen, well cast) who finds herself married to a man who has been forced to wed her. The rage of confinement and the anguish of rejection ooze out of the tense frames.
Sequences in the couple’s bedroom, with a gigantic tell-tale double bed at its center, capture the ironical nullity of a marriage based on bullying tactics. There is an element of naive desperation in the couple’s shared space.
The writing is hard-hitting but relentlessly supple and slender. There is ample room for innuendos in the dialogue and situations. Antardwand avoids the easy road to realism. The ambiance does not depend on how the actors pitch the accent in the spoken word or their body language. Though these are authentic, it’s the deeper malaise of a society buried neck-deep in prejudices and superstition that the director focuses on. The camera work by Malay Ray is exploratory but non-judgmental. Scenes of characters moving in and out of dark, old-fashioned interiors are shot without wallowing in symbolism.
The performances are thoughtful. Akhilendra Mishra and Vinay Pathak pitch into the ambiance of rousing realism as the father of the bride and the kidnapped groom, respectively. Raj Singh Choudhary, as the precious groom last seen in Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal, again reveals an admirable ability to blend into the bleeding fabric of mofussil mayhem.
The film is suffused with sincerely sketched characters. Jaya Bhattacharya, as the bride’s far-from-persecuted Bhabhi, and, for that matter, the unknown actor Dadhi Raj Paney, who plays Akhilendra Mishra’s faithful servant, bring a kind of fringe fertility into the storytelling.
The finale is self-indulgent in its idealism. A society so breached by gender and caste biases cannot be lit up by a sudden beam of optimistic light.
But there’s no harm in trying. Antardwand is a commendable attempt to examine the underbelly of rural Bihar. It doesn’t purport to shake up the status quo. The film only wants to remind us that we need to heal our collective social conscience before curing the discrepancies that feed into our dream of emerging from the darkness into the light.
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