BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: In contemporary India, a country of more than 1.2 billion people and nearly as many viewpoints, contrast isn’t just obvious, it underpins and fuels a country that was formed in 1948 and has had a far from harmonious but nonetheless enduring relationship with democracy ever since. For a documentary filmmaker a simple pan can imply the crux of what they’re trying to communicate, and in Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her, the story of two opposing approaches to the lives of young Indian women, that shot begins with a cow lolloping down a city street and ends with a glitzy Calvin Klein outlet. Tradition and fashion, history and the future, politics and consumerism – these are the conflicts of this strong documentary.
the story of two opposing approaches to the lives of young Indian women
Pahuja, a Canadian expatriate who previously made 2003’s Bollywood Bound, switches between two extremes. On one side are the entrants for the Miss Indian pageant, 20 young women almost at the top of a pyramid that represents opportunity. 'You earn for yourself, you gain respect," declares one entrant, Ankita Shurey, and the business of beauty represents the chance of a gilded life with endorsements and television deals. Despite the demands of the competition and the unyielding male gaze, these women see the chance to trump an intensely patriarchal society.
On the other side is the Durga Vahini, a nationalistic conservative woman’s association that indoctrinates 15 to 25-year-old Indian woman to maintain the country’s traditions by force (imagine the C.W.A with less baking and more rifle training). 'Your transformation into tigers begins here," declares one instructor, who tellingly adds that depictions of India’s traditional deities always featured weapons. The organisation sees change in India as a harbinger of social decay, with western values bringing supposedly western afflictions such as divorce, drug use and illegitimate children.
The director never tries to bring these two diametrically opposed worlds together – it’s not overstating the fact to say that violence could have eventuated – but in the back and forth you gain insight into not only the choices facing a young woman in India, but the global struggle to find a middle ground between perceptions of exploitation and subjugation for women. But Pahuja is not the first filmmaker to do this, and sometimes her ambition overreaches the film’s stakes as she evinces to paint a disturbing tone.
The Miss India contestants supply a handful of possible narratives, but with Durga Vahini the filmmaker is drawn to Prachi Trivedi, a young firebrand who appears to have learnt all too well from her domineering father, Hemanji, a traditionalist who pauses an interview to tell his daughter to get him a biscuit and happily has no qualms in describing her future as wife to a husband he will choose. 'Marriage is her duty"¦ I won’t be looking after her forever," declares the father, to which his daughter snappily replies, 'Happy to leave." For a moment they sound like one of those dreaded American sitcoms.
