‘Pink’ is such an important film. And a very well made film at that. The first half was slick and kept me on the edge of my seat. You feel the fear and vulnerability that the women protagonists were made to endure. You tremble with indignation every time you see those wealthy, influential brats assaulting and harassing the three women. You’ve seen those brats so often in the capital city. Their sense of entitlement over the city, where they feel they can break every law, assault every woman on the street, because their daddies hold on to several powerful strings that they can always pull at will.
The film scrutinises a deeply ingrained sexism that is so internalised that many have stopped questioning it. Our attitudes towards women, their sexuality and the idea of consent. A neighbour assumes the women could be ‘loose’ since they sometimes have male guests coming over to their house at night (never mind that the same neighbour is always trying to get a sneak peak of their undergarments when they hang them in the balcony to dry). The waiter and the manager at the resort assume they must have been asking for it since their body language was carefree and they drank with men and cracked ‘non-veg’ jokes. They’re not embarrassed about their sexual history. Yes, they’ve been in relationships in the past and had consensual sex in the past. Yes, consensual sex. Consent being the key word. A ‘no’ in a NO. A statement in itself. And doesn’t need to be qualified by any other statement or action.
I did have some issues, though. I do wish the women weren’t represented by a male lawyer, who’s pretty much the vanguard of women’s rights by the end of the film and plays up the ‘male saviour’ complex. And Amitabh Bachchan and Piyush Mishra ham their way through the second half. In fact, Amitabh Bacchchan’s painfully over dramatized recitation of an otherwise good poem in the end credits was such a downer. And one major problem with the way the film ends, but won’t reveal here, since that’ll be a spoiler for those who haven’t watched the film. Also, why’s it called ‘Pink’? Doesn’t that play up on stereotypes that the film actually tries to break?
And yeah, for once I didn’t mind the three protagonists playing up the ‘Hindu, Muslim, Christian’ stereotype. In fact, I think the film actually inverses the notion of that stereotype and makes a very pertinent point in the process