Bandit Queen

1994’s Bandit Queen is a punishing film. But it’s also a beautiful one. Which perhaps metaphorically explains the persistence of its main character, Phoolan Devi, whose life seems to be made up of one on torture after another, interrupted by only the briefest moments of joy. According to director Shekhar Kapur’s film, it’s a life many Indian women born into lower castes are forced to endure thanks to religious and social mores that equate the female gender on the same level as dogs and livestock.

Based on the book India’s Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi, the movie doesn’t shy away from the graphic rapes, beatings and emotional scars, beginning with her forced marriage at the age of 11 to a 30-year-old man. Raped just days after her wedding, Phoolan flees from household, which marks her as a lower class whore into early adulthood by the higher-caste Thakurs.

Exiled from her village, Phoolan crosses paths with a group of bandits living in the countryside. Rescued from another attempted rape, their second-in-command, Vikram, trains her in the ways of their criminal lifestyle, making her a full-fledged member of the gang. But their relationship is short-lived as intra-gang rivalry comes to a head and Phoolan is once again under the thumb of a male-dominated society that punishes her with sickening ferocity.

A full description of Bandit Queen reads like a litany of atrocities, most of them of a demeaning sexual nature. In that sense, it’s not unlike the rape-revenge exploitation quickies of the ‘70s like I Spit On Your Grave. Yet Kapur’s film exists in an all-too-cruel reality, one in which this sort of masochistic ideology is still the norm. Phoolan’s revenge comes in the form of a massacre of her own, an eye-for-an-eye slaughter that turns her into a folk hero amongst the Mallah caste from which she was born…and public enemy number one by the authorities who realize the danger she represents as a political figurehead (and, indeed Phoolan was elected to Parliament in 1996).

It’s difficult to assess the accuracy of Kapur’s version of events. Phoolan herself fought to have the film banned but eventually consented after proper compensation, according to internet sources. But the cause behind the film is a just and necessary one, issuing a very powerful, very public call to arms against the ruling classes. And in that sense, Phoolan may very well have had her most satisfying revenge on those who wronged her.

Kapur speaks quite eloquently about the production and Phoolan herself in the commentary track provided on Twilight Time’s 3000-copy limited edition Blu-ray. In fact, by the time the credits role he has his own epiphany about the sort of films he really should be making (the actor/director went on to produce Elizabeth and its sequel). An isolated score track accompanies the new high-definition transfer which is a great match for the impressive landscape shots Kapur captures throughout.