"Every woman goes through the test of fire every day."
Hello everyone!
It's quite a potentially disturbing one, however, so please read with caution.
Because apparently, I stumbled upon cinematic masterpieces that STILL somehow manage to describe situations that should be brought to light much more often.
I'm truly a fan of those types of things.
I promise that's definitely not all I watch (I'm currently obsessed with Pursuit of Jade, for example), but it's certainly a massive portion of what I DO watch for entertainment sake.
And when I find a niche I like, I tend to stick to it, because it usually has a lot to give me.
Which is why we're continuing with a movie series, and heading into Mardaani 2.
Mardaani 2 picks up after Mardaani in which Shivani Shivaji Roy broke a huge human trafficking case wide open. She's since passed her examinations and has been named the new Superintendent of Police, transferred to Kota. Her husband and niece don't come with her, which is a little unusual, but apparently it wasn't going to be a job that sticks, anyway? I'm not sure about the reasons lol!
Either way, Kota has experienced a slew of unsolved cases currently, the most recent one being of a young woman brutally beaten, raped, and then murdered. Shivani goes onto television and promises to find the killer; this is watched by the actual killer, Sunny, who you can IMMEDIATELY tell is basically coocoo for cocoa puffs.
He takes Shivani's promise as a challenge, breaking into her new house just to show her he can and that she can't touch him; he also steals one of her saris, which he then uses to hang a journalist that he's actually been instructed to come kill. Oh yeah, he was on a different mission, but side quested to the young girl he raped in the meantime.
Shivani's the one who's obviously called to the scene of the crime, told the journalist's wife was apparently having an affair, and he killed them both before hanging himself, and she snorts and says yeah right, maybe in our dreams. That's my sari so this is the work of the same guy.
The rest of the class is making Pikachu faces, but she's busy trying to figure out how the hell to catch Sunny. Eventually, she finds a boy who saw the blast, and who picked up an asthma inhaler, which tells her something about Sunny, but doesn't help her case.
Because Sunny, who's posing as a tea boy to keep an eye on Shivani, kills her witness before they can have a composite sketch made. This causes a media uproar because bodies seem to be piling up with nothing to show from it coming from the police, and as Shivani's taking real heat, it's decided she'll be transferred out of Kota. She clashes with her boss about it, saying that if she were another man her methods would never have been questioned, and why should she have to tailor them just because she's a woman?
But now she has two days left, so she goes and makes amends with her misogynistic underling, whose network of informants is what she needs, and that eventually leads her to an information seller that explains who actually had the journalist killed: a rising politician, who wants to take out any and all opposition surrounding him.
They catch his right hand man, and torture him to reveal Sunny's hideout, where they find another victim, though this one's thankfully alive, so she can be saved. Sunny decides to take matters into his own hands, however, and attacks Shivani when she's giving him a lift, thinking he's still the tea boy. She's stronger than she looks, however, and much smarter, having figured out he isn't who he says he is, and nearly has him, but he just manages to escape.
Going on the offensive, Shivani releases a video of Sunny they dug up, showing him being beaten off a bus for mistreating a woman, and the video goes viral. Enraged, Sunny kidnaps the granddaughter of the original guy who hired him to kill the journalist (obviously, the politician won't be doing things himself, duh) and promises to kill her if Shivani doesn't publicly apologize to him.
Mental, I'm telling you.
Everyone around Shivani is like OMG JUST APOLOGIZE and literally stopping her from doing her job, and I'm over here thinking if this is ACTUALLY how things work in India, then shit is bad. Then again, I know for a fact women are basically still barred from becoming plastic surgeons in my country and bullied until they drop out, so I'm not sure I can talk ...
Anyway, Shivani finds the granddaughter in the nick of time, using her actual skills to outsmart Sunny, but she's running out of tracks.
The next day, Diwali, she goes on a talk show whose host has wanted her in the hot seat for AGES, and while he tries to tear her down through what he thinks are witty questions, she answers them with razor sharp smarts and systematically pulls it all apart around him like a house of cards, detailing exactly what a woman has to go through on the daily that men just won't ever comprehend, so before he starts judging her he might as well just shut up, as he's not qualified in the slightest.
Her subordinate, watching this with his young daughter and figuring out, hey, MAYBE I'm the asshole here, finally caves and comes to help her while she's trying to find Sunny's next victim, focusing on powerful women he seems to hate. The subordinate offers the politician Sunanda, who's running opposite the guy wanting so desperately to win he's killing people.
Bingo, says Shivani, and once they learn she's gone from an event she was attending, it's all hands on deck and a search on foot.
Shivani's the one who eventually finds Sunny's hideout in a couple's house where he's taken their young daughter hostage as well, and of course gets hit unconscious for her troubles. She wakes up while Sunny's strangling Sunanda, but manages to distract him enough that he starts beating on HER in his rage instead.
See, Shivani went to visit his dad in prison, feeling guilty as can be over the death of his wife. Sunny's mother was an outspoken woman, and her husband wanted to murder her for it. She might have escaped him if not for the fact Sunny revealed where she was hiding, and the fact that he gave his own mother up, plus how he felt ashamed of her strong character and outspoken nature, have literally twisted his brain, and he now takes that anger out on similar women.
Shivani distracts him long enough for Sunanda and the girl to grab cans of paint and throw them onto Sunny, who, being asthmatic, is going to actually die from this exposure unless helped, but Shivani's got other plans for him, beating him with his own belt right out onto the street. She continues walloping him in the same way he beat his victims, until she can't lift her arm anymore, at which point Sunanda picks the belt up, the girl beside her and every other woman in the neighbourhood behind their backs.
The movie ends with some horrific facts about India and rape cases in the country, and holy cow but this series is NOT pulling any punches!
It's raw, it's dark, it's emotional, but it brings out Rani Mukerji's best if you ask me, and I am totally here for it. While learning about all this is devastating, I think it's important that we do so that we can do better in future.
Mardaani 2 might not be absolutely perfect in every beat (like, what happened to that politician who organized everything?), but it's damn good, and sucks you right in from start to finish. So do yourself a favour and watch if you ever get a chance.
xx
*images and video not mine
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