Phule movie review: A middling, talky period drama about a remarkable revolutionary couple

Indian Express

25-04-2025

Phule movie review: In the 19th century Maharashtra, Jyoti Rao Phule and his wife Savitri Bai lit the flame of female education and all-round empowerment at a time when girls were married off when they were barely more than children, forced to bear and rear their own children for the rest of their lives.
In an early scene, we see little Savitri learn how to read with the help of the much-older Jyotiba, and how that changed her, and made her aware of her world. The release of this bio-pic, whose opening credits claim that it is based on detailed research, was delayed because of ruffled Brahmin feathers, but nothing in it feels like a figment of the filmmakers' imagination. It feels like an accurate if sanitised representation of social realities of that time, during which the British were playing their own crafty games of keeping the 'natives' in check, by using the rampant caste discrimination to keep dividng and ruling while holding out the carrot of conversion to Christianity.
The powerful, wealthy Brahmins of Poona in the 1840s are shown as the torchbearers of the ways the 'untouchables' could be kept in their place: segregating their living spaces and the wells they drew their water from, forcing them to wear a broom so that they can sweep the path behind them, and several other well-documented practices. The film has brief scenes touching upon these, including one in which dung is thrown at Jyotiba and partner-in-crime Fatima Shaikh (Akshaya Gurav).
Both Pratik Gandhi and Patralekha as Jyotiba and Savitribai do justice to their characters, the latter given more fiery oratorial chances in her pushback against oppression. Vinay Pathak as Jyotiba's father, and Sushil Pandey as the older brother, both dead set against rocking the boat, show up as and when necessary. Darsheel Safary, the little boy of 'Taare Zameen Par', is here as the Phules' adopted son. Joy Sengupta makes a meal of his enraged Brahmin, stepping back from Jyotiba's 'impure' shadow, and attacking the couple at the drop of his traditional headgear, in the name of 'dharm' and 'pratha'.
The two hour plus run time feels like a stretch, cramming so many events — plagues, famines, the 1857 mutiny, the French revolution, Abraham Lincoln's abolition of slavery — that it begins feeling a cursory compilation of headlines. If there hadn't been such a pointless fuss made around its subject, 'Phule' would have come off exactly as it is, a middling, talky period drama about a remarkable revolutionary couple which set much-needed reforms in motion.
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But despite everything, the film is important. The Phules, who belonged to the 'dabey kuchley varg' themselves, fought for the right to be called 'Dalit', not 'achoot' (specific names of the 'varna' and 'jaati' appear to have been dropped in the film), and many changes have happened since. But casteism and discrimination are alive and well even today: perhaps 'Phule' can add to the growing discussion around these evils.