Damini (1993)
Director: Rajkumar Santoshi; Writer: Rajkumar Santoshi, Santanu Gupta, Dilip Shukla; Producer: Karim Morani, Bunty Soorma, Aly Morani; Cinematographer: Ishwar Bidri; Editor: V.N. Mayekar; Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Sunny Deol, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Anjan Srivastava, Paresh Rawal, Tinnu Anand, Vijayendra Ghatge, Rohini Hattangadi
Duration: 02:42:44; Aspect Ratio: 1.871:1; Hue: 24.060; Saturation: 0.139; Lightness: 0.313; Volume: 0.256; Cuts per Minute: 14.624; Words per Minute: 67.486
Summary: Damini (Sheshadri), the virtuous daughter of
an impoverished father (Srivastava) who is
worried about getting his two daughters
married, achieves the impossible when the
millionaire Shekhar Gupta (Kapoor) falls for
her. Shekhar’s family, including his mother
(Hattangadi) and his mother’s brother (Anand),
are initially against Damini but finally accept
her, until an incident disrupts the entire family.
On the day of Holi, Damini witnesses her
husband’s younger brother and his three
friends rape a maidservant. The entire family,
including her husband Shekhar, conspire to
hush up the scandal. When Damini refuses to
keep silent, the family, aided by a scheming
lawyer (Puri) and a corrupt police force, try to
make her go insane. She is eventually helped
by a down-and-out lawyer Govind (Deol) who
defends her in court. For a remarkable essay on
this extraordinary woman-centered melodrama
and mild commercial success, see Madhava
Prasad, ‘Signs of Ideological Re-Form in Two
Recent Films’ (1996).
Minimal Bollywood Art for Damini
The opening fragment shows a woman in a state of absolute terror,
in a nightmarish sequence in which we see her running away from
unseen pursuers and finding herself trapped. Her predicament is
highlighted by the interrogation that a doctor conducts. At first the
questions are hurled at her by a voice located somewhere behind
the camera---the voice of the Other-while the terror-stricken woman
is trapped in a paralysed state in front of the camera, as if by the
camera. For a moment it looks as if we in the audience are the
collective Interrogator. The tension created by the invisibility of the
interrogator approaches breaking point before we get relief in the
form of a reverse shot of the doctor, who now looks benign, and
appears to be doing no more than his duty. When the next cut
brings the woman back into the frame, her terror has already been
redefined as the result of her own unstable mental condition, a
hallucination. Our spontaneous identification with her has been
deprived of its rationality.
- Ideology of the Hindi Film (M. Madhava Prasad)
Ideology: Opening
Song: Bin saajan jhoola jhulu
The transition from this fragment to segment
A is startling: from paranoid hallucination and terror we cut to a
close-up of the same woman's face whence the camera pulls back
to reveal a stage on which she is dancing. From madness to the
innocence and romance of youth.
- Ideology of the Hindi Film (M. Madhava Prasad)
Ideology: Dance with Aamir Khan
Song: Jab se tumko dekha hai sanam
Ideology: Market sequence
Ideology: Approval from Shekhar's father
Ideology: Bird being released from the cage
Song: Gawaah hai, chand taare gawaah hain
Ideology: Rape Sequence
'Eclectic' is a good way of describing the tandava scene in Damini. There are flashes of Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Odissi in Meenakshi Seshadri's dancing. The choreography is punctuated with metaphors that correspond with Shiva in his angry state, where his third eye opens and reduces everything in sight to ashes.
Ideology: Damini's Dance sequence
Damini, seemingly personifying/ imitating Shiva, opens her third eye. She is dressed in saffron clothes; the rudraksha beads she wears are not unlike the snakes that adorn Shiva's person.
The raising of a single eyebrow is a gesture that finds expression in several classical dances. But it is used most frequently and extensively in Kathak.
Now it's the tabla, as Damini suddenly transitions to Kathak chakkars, finishing with her hands thrown to either side, a typical Kathak stance that suggests the end of a phrase.
Then, in the very next line, she draws on Odissi, particularly the square pose called the chowka, while her hands whirl around her torso. This phrase ends with Vidyut Bhranta, an akasha chari from the Natyasastra. A chari is, simply put, a codified way of moving across space. Akasha charis are ones where the foot significantly breaks contact with the floor in the course of its travels. The chari seen here is an upward jump where the dancer throws her pointed feet up in the air behind her, arching her spine to meet them.
If this sequence has not speeded up at the editing console, that's really a breathtaking speed to dance at which requires tremendous stamina, vigour and flexibility, especially to achieve the degree of neatness that Meenakshi Seshadri does.
The percussion instrument used here is the mridanga, which often accompanies Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi.
That's a sliding movement from Odissi, called a bhasa. Her hands are bent to suggest the shape of the drums that Shiva holds.
Damini possibly switches roles to suggest the unfortunate being who bears the brunt of Shiva's wrath. In mythology, this unfortunate being is mostly Kama, or Cupid, the deity of love and desire, who decides to shoot an arrow at Shiva while he is meditating. Shiva's meditation is disturbed, and he becomes furious enough to reduce Kama to ashes.
Choreographically, that turn, or bhramari, to use its Odissi equivalent, doesn't fit into the frenetic dancing that comes before or after it. Perhaps it is a moment of pause, a cry for help.
The choreography gets increasingly experimental as it tries to pack all the leap-flash-bang effects available in classical dance into a tihai - where a phrase of rhythm repeated thrice marks the end of a sequence.
There is an utplavana, where she jumps off the floor, followed, very quickly, by a snake-like movement, where she twists her body close to the floor. Springing up, she begins to circle the space on her knees - a movement most commonly found in Kathak but occasionally used in other dances for its dramatic potential. The last phrase of the tihai is laced with a couple of chakkars, then a leap, not unlike the Vidyut Bhranta chari seen earlier, followed by more chakkars, again ending in a slightly unformed version of the Kathak stance that signifies the end of a sequence. Actually, the distortion of form makes it look like she is lamenting her fate - another popular expression of separation, longing and suffering.
Ideology: Transfer of Agency
Indiancine.ma requires JavaScript.
