Stree - Movie Review 8/10
1. The ghost of Stree haunts the patriarchal spaces of an imaginary village, Chanderi.
2. An obscure, senile historian is stuck in the black days of Congress Emergency, and keeps repeating, "Emergency khatam ho gaya hai kya?"
3. The saviour of the land is a ladies tailor, a proud son of a prostitute, and absolutely nonviolent.
4. Even the in-humanity of the ghost is limited to abducting naked men and leaving their clothes behind as memory and shame.
5. Men roam the streets in saree to avoid being 'taken' by the spectre. Wives promise to return home early and protect their hysterical husbands.
Stree (2018), with its comedic horror, is a film of feminist reversals. The raped, repressed, sexually starved returns in the form of spectral guilt and call of the other. She suspends the nude (deliberate use) men in a zone of nowhere; in the end they are suddenly set free and they emerge out of blankness- an army of naked men, free at last from the wrath of the wronged.
The film redeems itself and its narrative space not by exorcising the ghost or killing it, but simply by turning the sacrificial victim into the protector of the same cursed land. Director Amar Kaushik twists and rotates the spook incidents in Bangalore in the 90s, and gives us the historical ghost who doesn't enter the premises if the villagers write on their walls, "O Stree, kal aana" ("Nale ba" in Kannada). Instead, the dark lane is her hunting ground. Unlike men, she doesn't force, doesn't kill, doesn't assault. She is an aesthetic phantom, her beauty is in her voice, in her seeking permission. For the men, desire is the cause of disappearance.
Rajkumar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi and Aparshakti Khurana and their quirky lines are deliriously insane.
Take these:
"Uske paas sab ka Aadhaar link hai"
"Bhagwan ka darzi roopi avatar"
"Acha to humari dushman ek padhi likhi stree hai"
"Naye bharat ki Chudhail".
Watch Stree and may you return unclothed and woman enough to accept who you are - a misogynistic piece of shit. 😊
Thank You ❣️
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