Bandit Queen

Bandit Queen is a difficult film to go through. In the famous world of Bollywood's song and dance, this biographical feature is certainly a breath of fresh air in terms of storytelling and honest filmmaking. Shakhar Kapur handles the subject with great sensitivity and visible empathy towards the main character of Phoolan Devi, whose life story is impossible to even listen to. What this woman had to endure is beyond imagination and is harrowing to watch, but her survival is an inspiring triumph. Bandit Queen is disturbingly realistic, and I can totally understand those who don't like it, because we do not watch films to see reality, but rather to escape it. The movie is by no means entertaining, the story is bitter and excruciating, but there are many lessons one can learn from watching it and, at the very least, realise how privileged most of us are. The film is excellently acted, with Seema Biswas proving her mettle as an actor of extraordinary talent and compassion. Her portrayal is a world-class act on a level of its own, and she totally immerses herself in this most difficult role and life story. May no person ever have to go through what this woman went through to justify the making of a notable biopic of this sort. Kudos to Kapur for an impressive effort. Watch it if you can, expect zero entertainment and just treat it the way you treat documentaries. You might be impressed, if not rewarded.

I saw this movie over 5 years ago and the subject still infuriates me, as it should. Her anger and initiative were inspiring. Not that I would takeover an army and kill people, but the scene at the well and at the rebel strong hold will never leave my mind. This is a great film but be prepared for the strong subject matter.

I think that the movie was really good. Subject, acting and Nusrat Fateh ALi Khan's music were marvellous. Although the director has succeeded in showing the status of women in rural areas and how they suffer at the hands of male-dominated culture, he has neglected Phoolan's character a bit and has focussed more on the violence faced by her.

"Bandit Queen" is a controversial and groundbreaking Indian film (co-produced by Great Britain's "Channel Four") telling the real-life story of Phoolan Devi (Seema Biswas, excellent), a low-caste woman given to a husband at age 11 who runs away from him, is constantly violated by upper-caste males, until pairing with a handsome outlaw, Vikram Mallah (Nirmal Pandey), who shows her some respect and invites her to join his gang. Devi became a mythical national figure in her own lifetime (she had just been released from an 11-year prison term when the movie came out, and was murdered in 2001), hailed as "The Bandit Queen" or "Queen of the Ravines". Although at first Devi took legal action to ban the movie's exhibition in India (and it was actually banned for some time - after all, this is no Bollywood fantasy), she eventually changed her mind (plus, Channel Four paid her $60,000...).

A lot has been said about the accuracy of everything portrayed on screen ("My life was much harder", Devi would have said after the first time she saw the movie). Just like he would do in 1998's successful "Elizabeth", Shekhar Kapur knows how to turn a larger than life, actual trajectory in a huge spectacle - but still keeping the essence of its core. Truth be told, this is one of those extraordinary sagas that if even half of what's portrayed on screen is real, it's already quite a journey. Kapur might have been a high-caste, city-bred man trying to portray the life of a brave and rebellious low-caste woman fighting for her survival - in a way that no other woman in her time had done, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know or doesn't have the right to try to depict this reality he doesn't directly belong to. How honest Kapur's original intentions were we can't know for sure, but that doesn't undermine his accomplishment here; this is a story that had to be told to a larger international audience. If a movie manages to work both as an adventurous spectacle and a tale of resurgence after national injustice and misfortunes, then it deserves to be seen. 8.5/10.

This is a remarkable movie. "The Bandit Queen" is a powerful and repugnant portrayal of a modern real-life Indian outlaw, Phoolan Devi ("Goddess of Flowers"). The movie opens at the point at which the 11 year-old Phoolan is sold as a bride to a middle-aged man. The marital rape and abuse that follows drives her away and eventually, as an outcast, into a life of brigandage.

What I found most striking in this movie is that it does not portray the heroine merely as a "wronged woman" but as a woman with deep psychological problems -- to me she frequently appeared to be downright psychotic. There are several scenes of unbridled, I might say X-rated, violence in which Phoolan is seen to gradually wind up from anger to viciousness. In one of these scenes she beats her former husband with a rifle butt. It was -- and I think it was meant to be -- sickening.

"The Bandit Queen" was very controversial in India. It was widely thought to be Oscar material, though apparently did not make the list due to political infighting within the Indian movie-making community. It's well worth the viewing. But I only recommend it for people with strong stomachs. It's a true story (the real-life Phoolan Devi went on to marry above her caste and became the first Untouchable to serve in the Indian Parliament) but it's a story without a happy ending.