Zeenat (1945) :
Brief Review -
A Muslim social melodrama about a woman's tragedy that you don't even want to happen to your enemy. I may have to tell the full story of the film because that's the only way to review it. A woman gets married to a decent man she likes, and he falls down from a horse during the wedding rituals. He and the woman (Zeenat) spend a night together, and the next day the husband passes away. Zeenat becomes pregnant, and she is abandoned by her in-laws and her own parents as well. Left with no support, she gives birth to the child (a girl), whom society calls an illicit child. She leaves her daughter at her husband's grave and goes to commit suicide. However, a mother's instinct stops her from taking her own life, but by the time she comes back, the child is taken by someone else. She finds the child but cannot tell the foster parents because one of her husband's friends is there, fearing that the daughter will lose a good life. She becomes a maid at the same house, and after 15 years, she tells her own story as a tale to her own daughter. The daughter asks, "What happens next?" Zeenat has no answers because the story hasn't found its end yet. To make it more dramatic, the daughter's wedding is in danger because of Zeenat's past. Will society accept her facts? This is truly a very tragic and painful story that any woman can go through in her life. What happens in the climax is also very painful and emotional. Zeenat finally gets her way, but by making a big sacrifice. Society is late to understand, as always, but isn't it a shameful thing for the most sophisticated people in society? Zeenat is about that shame. It's an attempt to erase that particular hatred those sophisticated people throw at helpless women and easily defame them. Zeenat, as a film, may have some flaws, but Zeenat, as a woman, is never wrong. She was pure. Impure was society, which didn't understand her. For 1945, this was definitely a difficult film to make and a difficult film to digest.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.
