Phule movie review: Pratik Gandhi brings home the Mahatma

Bollywood seldom tells stories of Dalit assertion. It mostly sees the marginalised as victims who need the compassion and cover of an upper caste saviour. Perhaps, that’s why the inspirational story of Jyotirao (Pratik Gandhi) and Savitribai Phule (Patralekhaa) remained off the radar of commercial filmmakers. Known to pick up challenging subjects, this week, writer-director Ananth Mahadevan turns his lens on the intrepid Maharashtrian couple that challenged the prevailing social order and the upper caste hegemony in the 19^th century through education and progressive values, and started a mission against caste and gender discrimination.

Unlike last week, when Kesari fictionalised the story of C. Sankaran Nair beyond recognition to cash on some chest-thumping moments, Mahadevan is sedate, largely sticks to the recorded history, and doesn’t lend his work an overtly agitative tone.

The film opens with a wide-angle shot of the fields of Marigold. Gradually, we discover that Phule gets his surname from the flowers his family grows in the fields granted by the last Peshwa ruler for their floristry services. Flowers are offered to the deities, but the gardener is kept out of the temple. Even his shadow is proscribed. His family and immediate society have accepted it as an order dictated by the scriptures, but Phule stands against the “middlemen” between the Almighty and man. Inspired by the French Revolution, he quotes from Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man.”

Mahadevan brings to light the hypocrisy, the unspoken vice in religion. The Brahmins want the numerically superior Shudras to take up arms to take on the Colonial power, but don’t want them to read, write, or have a voice. Through Savitribai’s trusted ally, Fatima, the film also opens a window to the orthodoxy among Muslim men towards girls’ education, which is not different from that of Hindu society.

The Lords open the education path for them, but to lead them to the Church. A strategist, Phule can see through the divide-and-rule tactics of the British and implores the high priests to set the house in order before taking on the foreign power. 

Some moments make you chuckle at the conceit of a section of the upper caste. When a group of Brahmins sends men to eliminate Phule, he, laughingly, says that was the first time that Brahmins had spent money on him. When Phule conducts marriage rituals, Brahmins object and seek compensation. Phule asks if they would pay the barber when they shave themselves.

The CBFC has muted the tone, but those who could read between the lines will find answers to the Battle of Bhima Koregaon before Phule and B.R Ambedkar’s renunciation of the Hindu faith after him. Popular culture has focused so much on Mahatma Gandhi that we have forgotten that the non-violent struggle of the original Mahatma of modern Indian history continues unabated.

However, in terms of storytelling and craft, Mahadevan again disappoints. For a large part, the film reads like a visual essay, where each paragraph captures the highlight of their journey. Perhaps, to sidestep the opposition before the release, in a foreword kind of sequence, the film underlines that Phule had some Brahmin supporters and friends before moving to the opposition from the family and society; the Brahmin backlash, Phule’s critique of the caste system; dung and stones hurled at Savitribai; providing shelter to pregnant Brahmin widow and so on in a textbook style.

You can appreciate the sincerity in Mahadevan and writer Muazzam Beg’s storytelling, but it is more educational than immersive. The internal struggle and self-doubt of the protagonists hardly come to the surface, and the ideas of Phule sound more like teachings than lived experiences. One can see the battle to get a well of their own is hard-fought, but you don’t feel their thirst for change. Like most historicals, the film makes the mistake of seeing Phule through the prism of today by putting the halo behind him. Despite solid actors like Joy Sengupta and Amit Behl, it appears the Brahmin characters are there to be ridiculed. It means no suspense or surprise awaits us in their journey.

However, Pratik finds depth even in this creative flatness to portray the gravity of the struggle. The confident gait, the furrow on the forehead, and the transition to a man who realises that his mission will not be complete in his lifetime, Pratik coalesces different timelines and situations in his malleable frame. The understated ebullience of Patralekhaa feels more like 2025 than 1885, but together, they generate the vibe of a couple that grows from sharing a teacher-student bond to becoming soulmates. 

Phule is currently running in theatres