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Mint
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
‘Phule' review: Too much like textbook history
Writer-director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan bookends his 129-minute biopic on social reformers and educationists Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule with the events of 1897. Poona is devastated by the plague. Savitribai runs across parched land to bring an ailing child to a makeshift medical camp. Before the doctors can pronounce a prognosis, events move back in time to 1848. Savitri was a child bride then, married to the slightly older Jyotirao Phule who, even as a teenager, was progressive enough to want his wife to be educated. This did not sit well with his conservative father (Vinay Pathak). Undeterred, Jyotirao continued to encourage not just his wife, but also the younger village girls, to learn. Now older and more committed, the Phules' egalitarian practices and focus on social reform conflicted with the caste hierarchy of the time. The ire of higher-caste men, enraged that the 'untouchables' were stepping out of their lane, compelled the couple to move away from their family home. Joy Sengupta plays the upper-caste Vinayak, Darsheel Safary is the adopted son Yashwant Phule, and Amit Behl plays the head priest. Sharad Kelkar serves as narrator, giving the staccato screenplay some cohesion. The landed Phule was both businessman and social reformer. The film progresses through key life moments, almost as if visually and dutifully depicting Wikipedia entries for the Phules. From Jyotirao teaching his wife, to setting up schools for girls, taking a stand against widow discrimination, forming the Satyashodhak Samaj, encouraging Savitri and Fatima to become the first female teachers in India, and challenging the caste system—every landmark moment and action is perfunctorily depicted. Add to this a leaden cinematic language and basic storytelling (co-written by Muazzam Beg), which makes Phule feel like a rendition from a history textbook. Phule reads and rereads Thomas Paine's 1791 book Rights of Man. Inspired by the writings, he stokes his own little revolution that includes enrolling Savitri (Patralekhaa) and his friend's sister, Fatima Shaikh (Akshaya Gurav), in a teacher training programme and galvanising barbers to reject age-old oppressive practices. While Fatima is barely given any speaking scenes, we do see Savitri's empowerment and confidence increase. Jyotirao encourages and supports her, and Savitri bravely leans into her agency, even when upper-caste Brahmins humiliate her. Patralekhaa Paul is forceful and spirited in those latter scenes—an energy that is missing from Jyotirao—yet Gandhi interprets this historical character with reverence and solemnity. Mahadevan respectfully enforces Savitri and Jyotirao's rock-solid partnership, their mutual respect, and unfaltering commitment to a greater cause—one that still feels pertinent. First Published: 26 Apr 2025, 04:54 PM IST
Deccan Herald
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Deccan Herald
'Phule' movie review: Not as revolutionary as the couple
In Ananth Mahadevan's 'Phule', some aspects of the revolutionary couple who paved the way for a radical change in society is depicted in fragments throughout the film — from Jyotiba Phule teaching his wife English to getting inspired by Thomas Paine's 'Rights of Man', and from the couple opening a school for girl children and Dalits, to facing stiff opposition from Brahmins later.
The Independent
08-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Book of a lifetime: Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
Tom Paine reminds you that some arguments matter, it is important to win them, and that the written word may help. He answered Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) with his Rights of Man (1791). Mary Wollstonecraft pitched in too. What times those were! Paine believed that good government – representative democracy – was a matter of common sense – and that monarchy, aristocracy, or any system based on precedent and heredity, was an odious nonsense. He writes accordingly: a lucid, forthright language, the language of common sense. Paine can teach us how to write to win the arguments that matter. Paine writes about Britain from the perspectives of America and France; the first after, the second in the midst of, its revolution. He estranges the familiar. In light of the achievements in America and the progress in France, Britain shows up badly. Those revolutions are history. But if we read Paine and understand what he makes of them, we have a measure of where we are now, how well or badly we are governed. He can help us assess the health of our civic life, our res publica. Is it fit to be looked at from any angle? Answer: No. Paine is a writer who obeys William Blake's injunction to 'Labour well the Minute Particulars'. For example, he advances the idea of a welfare state (he believed in 'reciprocal aid') and a system of progressive taxation to fund it. He has the idea – and, minutely, he costs it. He describes in detail the taking of the Bastille – and comments: 'The downfall of it included the idea of the downfall of despotism, and this compounded image was become as figuratively united as Bunyan's Doubting Castle and Giant Despair.' So in minute particulars he sees incarnated a figurative sense. Because Paine reveals the figurative in the details of real events, his insights are applicable again and again, beyond those particulars. His writing is transferable to other circumstances, including our own. Here he is on certain politicians 'who went no farther with any principle than as it suited their purpose as a party'. And here on rioting: 'It shows that something is wrong in the system of government, that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.' This fits us too: 'Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honour. It is not the produce of riches only, but of the hard earnings of labour and poverty.' Rights of Man is the citizen's book of a lifetime now, as it was back then.
