Pinjar

indian cinema at its best
Against the background of the traumatic partition of Pakistan and India, this movie tells the story of a woman (Puro/Hamida)whose life is swept away by events that she does not control or understand, but who refuses to surrender entirely to them.

Puro (a hindu girl) is kidnapped by Rashid (a muslim man)the day before her marriage as an act of vengeance in a feud between their two families. As a hindu of her cast, Puro's life is finshed because she has been tainted by the kidnapping and her family reject her. She must now accept the marriage offer of Rashid, her captor, who is in love with her.

However, Puro makes it clear that this marriage is an act of desperation and that she absolutely hates her captor/husband. This way begins her new life as Hamida. And from this point Rashid begins his efforts to win his wife's heart and to find redemption for the sin which he feels he has committed against her. The opportunity to prove his worth to his beloved Hamida comes...

Mutual Captives
"Pinjar" portrays the life of a young Hindu girl named Puro as it unfolds during the separation of Pakistan from India. A Mulsim man named Rashid kidnaps her the night before her wedding as an act of revenge against her father. As planned, Puro's kidnapping brings her family into social disgrace, and they refuse to accept her back once she has been violated; she has no choice but to marry Rashid. While it is obvious that Puro is an innocent victim of the vengeance between the two families, it is less obvious that Rashid is just as much an innocent victim. The same combination of vengeance and traditional gender roles that shape Puro into someone passive and helpless, force Rashid to be an aggressor against his will.

The movie spends a lot of time idealizing Puro's youthfulness. The early musical numbers dramatize her relationship with her brother and portray her as bringing joy to her family through her beauty and playfulness. This idealization sets up her fall from...

"Nothing For The Daughter"
Note: Hindi with English subtitles.

An honest, poignant tale set in Pakistan just prior to the 1947 partition of Pakistan from India. Puro (Urmila Matondkar), a young Hindi girl is kidnapped shortly before her wedding by Rashid (Manoj Bajpai) a Muslim man from a neighboring village. The kidnapping is in retaliation of a wrong commited some years earlier.

In spite of the grief felt by Puro's family the Father refuses to go to the authorities and fight for her release. After all she is only a daughter, the cost of paying for help from a corrupt police force simply wasn't worth the money and the trouble it would cause between himself and the authorities as well as the local Hindu and Muslim communities. Thus Puro is left to make the best of it.

The hardships and disappointments suffered by Puro in her new life and marriage to Rashid become a micocosm of the larger problems facing the diverse community-at-large comprised of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs...

Click to Editorial Reviews