Movie Review: Begum Jaan (2017)- The fight of a brothel owner.

Begum Jaan- The story of a brothel owner who faces so much of delusional pride acting against her and her companions in the brothel. This is one such plot that pictures the effect of partition of 1947, even on smaller levels. 

Contents:-

1. Cast & Crew
2. Begum Jaan Movie Review: A fight towards the chase of professional independence in the time of Indian Independence
   1. Critic’s Rating
   2. Genres
   3. Begum Jaan Review  
      1. More about Filmmaking of Begum Jaan
3. More Crew details
4. Trivia

 Cast & Crew

Begum Jaan Movie Review: A fight towards the chase of professional independence in the time of Indian Independence

Critic’s Rating: 3/5

Genres: Period Drama, History

“Begum Jaan” Story:

The story starts with a bus at night in which a small family and a young couple were travelling . As the bus stops at one of the stops, the family gets down and a gang of goons get on the bus.

In one way or the other, they started harassing the girl, and hitting the guy due to which the girl ran out of the bus but was constantly followed by their chase.

At a fair point from the bus stop, she finds an old woman who tried didn’t utter a word but started taking her clothes off resulting in  embarrassment for the goons and they fled away.

Movie Insights

As the camera turns, a new plot of past incidents are ready to take the screen. The story moves to a brothel and a brothel owner, Begum Jaan (Vidya Balan), where the turn takes almost 70 years back in 1947 when India got Independence and the Last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten gave the order to Cyril Radcliffe to divide the borders of India and Pakistan with a line Known as Radcliffe line.

The brothel of Begum Jaan lies exactly in between the line. So, the government wanted to remove the brothel from that place. But Begum Jaan resisted in doing so, the story went head in revolt against the higher commands and the officials.

The prostitutes in Begum Jaan’s brothel are a number of girls she raised herself, who are disowned by their families and now work for her. Begum Jaan brothel was protected by Raja Saheb, a renowned Raja of that area who was both wealthy and powerful.

The higher officials tried several means to remove the brothel from that place but Begum Jaan was stiff like a mountain. 

The story moves ahead with several love stories, a few being real and a few being used. For the work to be done, the higher officials Iliays and Hari , hired a local goon Kabir, who at last attacked the brothel with guns and fire explosives.

A few prostitutes ran to save themselves but get captured by the policeman Shyam who tried to seek physical benefits from them. A girl child with the prostitutes started undressing herself the results in embarrassment for the policeman.

Whereas, Kabir and his gang continued firing resulting in the fall of Begum Jaan legacy.

“Begum Jaan” Review:

The story once heard sounds like a women-centric.  But, after the movie is on screen, well it fails to say its exact motive. In order to tell many happenings around, the debut director, “Srijit Mukherjee” falls short in portraying the way he must have exactly wanted to.

The brothel, life of prostitutes, the life of Raja, strings entangled in between free and caged India, and obviously the male dominant society, all these masterpieces in just 2 hours of the movie seems like a bit confusing. 

 But, in terms of acting and narrating, the movie picks the ultimate height. The narration of Amitabh Bachchan and the royal lifestyle of Naseeruddin Shah needs pragmatic claps.

On the other hand, the handful of girls including the glamorous and sensual Vidya Balan Have completely nailed it.  Pallavi Sharda, Flora Saini, Gauhar Khan never seem like much behind than the exceptional Vidya Balan.

What takes the most acknowledgment is the dialogue delivery by the girls in the brothel with Vidya Balan at the top of the list. Her dialogue delivery was a lot raunchy with a sense of abusiveness leaking whenever she spoke.

For the adaption of language to make the screen much closer to the real world of brothel such language has been taken into practice. The movie has been tagged with A certificate for the abusiveness used.

More about Filmmaking of Begum Jaan:

The music artists in this movie have touched the immense level of belonging with the music. So, it’s quite obvious for such a movie to have good music. The songs have been sung by the great Asha Bhosle(Prem Mein Tohre), another one by the other legend Shreya Ghosal(Holi Khelein), and a beautiful collaboration by the duo Sonu Nigam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan(Aazaadiyan).

The story is a powerful set of instances from the time of independence but if directed in a bit segregated way could have achieved much more recognition globally.

More Crew Details:

Trivia:-

1. The director of this film, Srijit Mukherji, also directed Rajkahini (2015), the original Bengali film that Begum Jaan is a remake of. The original Bengali film narrates the story of a house on the Radcliffe Line joining West Pakistan (now called Bangladesh) and West Bengal.

2. Was granted an A (adults only) certificate without any cuts by the Indian censor board, albeit the makers were asked to replace some dialogues that featured profanity.

3. The movie was shot in Dumka district in Jharkhand.

4. Many of the actresses made a comeback to Hindi films after a gap.

Related movies you may like to know about:

• Badhaai Ho
• Bol

Disha Gupta