In the recent past, there's been a lot of talk about the portrayal of women in Bollywood films. It is a world rife wtih contradictions and while huge strides have been made in changing how women are represented in the world's largest movie-making industry, a lot still needs to change. The current times are an optimistic indicator that this change may not be far behind. Yet something in me isn't quite ready to be a believer just yet.
The recent success of films like Queen, Mardaani and Mary Kom have proved that the box office numbers can be favourable for movies with female main leads supported by a non-A-lister cast. That is truly great news. That women-centric films can make money goes a long way in popularizing the development and production of more films with mainstream actresses playing central women protagonists. A lot of credit for this change goes to the current generation of actresses who are now proactively pushing the boundaries of the roles they play. Most notably we have veterans like Sridevi (English-Vinglish) and Madhuri Dixit (Aaja Nachle, Gulaabi Gang) from the older generation joined by Viday Balan (The Dirty Picture, Kahaani), Priyanka Chora (7 Khoon Maaf, Barfi, Mary Kom), Kangna Ranaut (Queen, Revolver Rani) and Deepika Padukone (Cocktail, Finding Fanny). The more I think about these actresses and the roles they're playing, the more I find myself scratching deeper below the surface to see if this new found feminism is anything more than skin-deep,
And so it is that I always come back to thinking about a movie that came out two years ago, arguably one of the most flawed early attempts at depicting a strong female character in a Hindi movie in recent time - Cocktail.
Released mid-year in 2012, the film came out within a few months of that's year's most successful woman-centric venture, a truly ground breaking film, Kahaani. Everyone cheered at the coming-of-age of Bollywood where intelligent, independent women characters were making their way to the forefront. The celebrations were short-lived. Till today, Cocktail remains a strongly polarizing movie touting the feminist agenda. No discussion of Bollywood's sexism or feminism can escape the mention of Cocktail. This makes me want to analyse the film in more detail and share what I think of it.
In my opinion the movie is deeply flawed. While I believe the intentions of the filmmakers may have been noble and that they may truly have believed they were making a film about a strong woman, prejudicies and sub-consciouss biases run deep in the human psyche and no film has ever epitomised that better than Cocktail. Let me explain why.
(If you haven't seen the movie yet, please be aware that the rest of this post will be liberally sprinkled with spoilers so proceed at your own risk.)
Let's start with the three central characters and their descriptions as they appear on the surface.
The main protagnist, albeit probably unwittingly so, is Veronica (Deepika Padukone) a spoilt little rich kid, neglected by her always-away-for-business father. Veronica is the "Wild Girl"; with a preference for skimpy clothes she loves to party hard, drink a lot and is openly sexual, even possibly promiscuous. She doesn't do her daily pooja or her laundry, doesn't clean up her apartment and essentially lives the carefree life of a teenager in a grown woman's body. From the very beginning she sounds like terrible cliche but we're told to believe that she is a "modern" woman, unapologetic about her vices and so we should love her. (I do love her but not for the reasons the director/writer want us to... more on that later).
Veronica meets Meera (Diana Penty), her polar opposite. Meera is the "Good Girl" who doesn't drink or party, keeps a clean house and religiously says her morning prayers every single day. She's the virgin, the pure hearted Yash Raj heroine, always dressed in pastels and with a sweetness that would put a child to shame. More cliches, you're thinking. I agree. With one small caveat - when Meera finds herself lost and abandoned in a foreign land she is rescued not by the hero of the film but rather by Veronica, the wild child with no apparent sense of responsibility. This is the first interesting thing in the movie so far.
Which brings us to - the Hero. Gautam (Saif Ali Khan) doesn't really have much of a character description here. He's basically nothing more than "the Prize". A supposedly charming good-looker with a propensity for picking up beautiful, young, "easy" women and whose interests align with Veronica when it comes to letting loose and having a good time. Personally I found him less charming and more smarmy with a dash of sleazy but hey, one girl's reprobate is another girl's rake. So I try not to judge.
Somewhere along the way the three of them become friends and Veronica and Gautam hook-up and then Gautam falls in love with Meera while Veronica falls in love with Gautam... yada yada yada. We all know how the story goes. The Good Girl gets the Prize and the Wild Girl gets to introspect on her life's choices.
Almost all the detractors obviously have a problem with the end. Their arguments have made the rounds time and time again and I see no merit in repeating them here. In my opinion the end is not the worst thing about the movie. In fact I'm maybe even a little relieved that Veronica doesn't end up with a jerk like Gautam. My problems with this film run far deeper.
For starters, I quesiton the basic premise of the characters. Time and again, we're shown that Veronica is the capricious one, immature, fickle and unreliable. You see, she drinks and swears like a sailor and dresses like a whore. What's worse, she's unapologetic about all of it. In comparison, Meera is the righteous, dependable, conscientious one. The foil. She's everything pure and wholesome, responsible, mature.
I disagree.
Meera, for all her honest-to-god goodness, is the fool who marries a complete stranger from a foreign land and pays him a dowry for it too. And then when he leaves her behind, armed with nothing more than his address, she follows him to a foreign land, manages to lose all her money and passport and finds herself homeless and penniless within the first 24 hours. What a wuss!
Veronica, on the other hand, in spite of having access to a life of luxury, chooses to live on her own and have a career as a photographer. No doubt her income is supplemented by Daddy Moneybags but she doesn't drift through a life of idle affluence. She steps away from it all and does her own thing. Her apartment may be a mess but it's her mess and she prefers that to a posse of servants and a spotless house which she could very well afford. Add to that, when she meets Meera, the epitome of everything she deplores, the sweet lost naive fool who can't fend for herself, instead of dismissing her she takes her under her wing and bolsters her up. Veronica is strong and cynical and more than a little lonely but she has a soft empathetic heart.
Further when Veronica and Gautum hook up, he's obnoxious to Meera, constantly mocking her goodness and comely habits. Veronica plays a buffer between the two. She understands and respects both their life choices, a courtesy neither of the characters award her in return.
For when his mother shows up at the door, Gautam's hypocrisy and double standards rear their ugly head. How can he possibly introduce a girl like Veronica to his mother? So he pushes Meera ahead and lies through his teeth. And believe it or not, every character in that movie, including Meera and Veronica, understand why he does so.
To me that single scene is what is terrible about this movie.
What's worse is that we as an audience, along with the charatcters in the movie, completely understand and empathize with Gautam at that moment. And we go along with this idea that a girl who was stupid enough to fall for the age-old marriage-to-an-NRI scam is more acceptable than the girl who can take care of herself and of another... simply based on their outward appearance. A fully clothed fool is preferred to a skimpily clothed firebrand.
What happens next is tragic but predictable. The wild child must change her core being to win the trophy, a man who is shallow and selfish. A man with no spine or moral compass. And she will still fail.
Going back to the beginng, I'm not sure Veronica ever needed to be unapologetic about her so called vices because I'm not sure she had any. I don't see what's wrong with dressing the way she does or drinking and partying the way she does as long as she takes care of herself and does it on her own dime. We judge her for a messy apartment because she would rather go out and have a good time than clean up her home and yet how many among us have not been guilty of that at some point or another? We judge her because she understands her sexual needs and caters to them. It outrages our sense of modesty and morality when in reality we can't think of one good reason why she shouldn't. There's no doubt that Veronica is deeply hurting, suffering from an emotional void left by a childhood of neglect. She's searching for companionship, possibly even love. She comes so close to finding that fulfilment within her friend, Meera and her lover, Gautam only to find out that deep within they judge her too. They leech off her for emotional and sexual fulfiment respectively but when the spotlight is turned on they shy away from standing by her. They're embarassed of being associated with her. That is the real flaw in the film.
I'm glad Meera and Gautam end up together in the end. I would like to believe Veronica can do better than either of them. What I'm most glad about is that she comes to the realization that changing herself to fit the ideals of Meera, Gautam and us, the audience, isn't going to get her any closer to redemeption. And when the movie ends with her standing on the side, looking at Meera and Gautam locked in a romantic embrace, I like to believe that she's comfortable not being anyone other than herself and she's happy to wait for someone who will love her, just the way she is.
Since Cocktail there have been other movies that are less judgemental of their strong modern women protagonists. Some even celebrated the sexual liberation of the Indian woman. But there have also been others (Ishaqzaade, for example) that gave their fiery women characters a similar fate as Veronica. It's not really fair to say we're not changing our biases at all but the change is slow and often its soft treads are drowned by the roar of the sexist juggernauts of pot boilers and "masala" films. Films like Cocktail are important because they spark debate on modernity and liberation and equality, about feminism in the movies and about our deep-seated underlying sub-conscious prejudices.
There's much to be done but we're on our way there. For now, that's all we have to celebrate.
Cheers!
