Bulbbul Review: Like a Blood Moon, it’s a rape revenge of a different kind; Its different because it advocates the strength of a woman to challenges, fall and rise.
After the terrific presentation of Paatal Lok, Anushka Sharma, is bold to venture into a rape-revenge narrative, while it may not have the high decibel attention that Paatal Lok got, yet the Bulbbul is a story that you would love to listen, watch and embrace it.
A dark, blood-soaked, free-floating feminist fable. It is a powerfully feminist, who rejects traditionally held beliefs, a saga of a woman wronged, The movie you tend to sit along from the very beginning, it does get you hooked within the initial few minutes, like the way you get mesmerized by watching the Blood Moon.
Bulbbul Review
This movie is well-told story of Bulbbul (played by Tripti Dimri) a girl who gets married at an early to Thakur (Rahul Bose) and goes through pain, betrayal and injustice post her child marriage. This all leads to hate and in turn gets associated with the movie’s theme wherein the rise of “Chudail ” weakens all bad elements while living off the early life encounters.
The pages of Bulbbul story zooms into the year 1881, when Bulbbul, a girl beyond once years with an appetite for frightening stories is wedded into a rich ‘zamindar’ family. As our eyes move ahead in the story, we get to discover that her husband isn’t the boy Satya, with whom she’s begins a friendship, but rather Satya’s sinister-looking elder brother Indranil, the Thakur, played by Rahul Bose.
Anvita Dutt’s striking debut set in the 19th century Bengal, uses the supernatural horror genre to tell the story of a wide-eyed child bride whose quest for a kindred soul and kindness pulls her deep into peril. Bulbbul (Dimri), a free spirit who used to love climbing trees and plucking raw mangoes in her ‘maayka’, has to turn into an obedient wife to her much older husband Indranil (Bose), who lives in a big haveli, with his mentally challenged twin Mahendra (Bose again), Mahendra’s wife Binodini (Dam), and younger brother Satya.
Destiny has forever destined her to play second fiddle to Bulbbul in the household, something that Binodini, the ‘chhoti bahu’, is very frustrated by. It has messy strands of the relationship between a young widow, a child-bride and a brother-in-law.
The writer has tried to bring in attention grabbing story telling approach, with the movie fast forward 20 years into the future where we discover Satya, on his way back to the ‘haveli’ after having studied law in London, is informed that a series of mysterious deaths have taken place in the time that he has been away. The villagers seem to believe that it is the doing of a witch that haunts the surrounding forest. Satya, in proper Jonathan Harker mode, dismisses the claims as old wives’ tales.
The narrator also uses the ancient trope of a bloodthirsty ‘chudail with ultey pair’, a familiar creature tale in our scary ‘kisse-kahaani’, to create scary moments, something you always dreaded when we get to hear stories that has terrifying aspects. The writing of Bulbbul is focused, and the performances of all the characters are rock solid.
Bose in the twin roles of the suspicious ‘thakur moshai’, as well as the man trapped in his damaged mind, Tiwary as the ‘devar’ who is a constant companion to his as-young-as-himself lovely bhabhi, Chatterjee as the ‘doctor babu’ who has a soft spot for the ‘badi bahu’. Dam is effective as the let-down ‘choti bahu’ who wreaks damage. And as the little girl who grows into a woman, her enigmatic smile hiding the pain which she harnesses to great effect, Dimri is terrific.
It is an experimental rape-revenge genre, that has scary moments, and scenes that you might find distinctively different. Some scenes though goes overboard, the story of a child bride who grows up to be an enigmatic woman presiding over her household, harboring a painful past as supernatural murders of men plague her village.Its worth watching once.
The creator of Bubbul Anushka Sharma might find herself in a happy space on OTT as her two successive presentations have got a good head start with mixed reviews. On her instagram Anushka writes ” She is everywhere”
Bulbbul is streaming on Netflix now.
Bulbbul movie cast: Tripti Dimri, Avinash Tiwary, Rahul Bose, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Paoli Dam, Ruchi Mahajan, Varun Paras Buddhadev
Bulbbul movie director: Anvita Dutt