Ankur Movie Review: Heralding a New Era

Shyam Benegal's Ankur kickstarted Shabana Azmi career with a bang. She bagged a National Award for her performance in the film as well. Shabana arrived at a point when art cinema in India was beginning to spread its wings tentatively. In fact, her career and the careers of her contemporaries like Om Puri and Naseeruddin, too shadowed the art film movement in Hindi cinema. Shabana got ample opportunities to showcase her talent as an actress. The Seventies and part of the Eighties were a fantastic period for her and for art cinema in Bollywood. She received the national award consecutively for three years from 1983 to 1985 for her roles in Arth (Mahesh Bhatt), Khandhar (Mrinal Sen) and Paar (Gautam Ghosh). The film, Godmother (1999, Vinay Shukla), brought her another national award, taking her current tally to five national awards!

Shabana has rendered some memorable roles in her career and will probably continue to do so in the years to come. Besides Ankur, some of her most memorable performances have been in films like Khandhar where she plays Jamini, a woman resigned to her fate; or as Rukminibai, the madame of the brothel in Mandi, or Kavita in Sparsh, or as Radha in Deepa Mehta's controversial Fire, or even the wronged wife Pooja in Arth. The actress has displayed a range that is phenomenal. Her eyes, her expressions, her body language, and her terrific vocal delivery are unmatchable. Shabana's natural style of acting, her nuanced performances are a part of a tradition which was probably initiated by Geeta Bali and then carried forward by the likes of Nutan, Tanuja, Jaya Bhaduri, till it flowered most splendidly in the person of Shabana Azmi.

The actress has worked with all the leading directors of her time, beginning with Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Satyajit Ray, Shekhar Kapoor, Manmohan Desai, Deepa Mehta, Saeed Mirza, Gautam Ghosh, Aparna Sen, Sai Paranjpe, Roland Joffe (City of Joy), John Schlesinger (Madame Sousatzka) and Ismail Merchant (In Custody). She has also kept up her link with theatre and her collaboration with Farooque Shaikh in Tumhari Amrita was much appreciated.

She has won many awards besides the five national awards that she has for Best Actress. Shabana has also won the Filmfare Award four times ? Swami (1977), Arth (1982), Bhavna (1984) and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Her role as Radha in Deepa Mehta's Fire brought her international recognition with the Silver Hugo Award for Best Actress at the 32nd Chicago Film Festival (1996) and Jury Award for Best Actress at Outfest, Los Angeles. She has also won the International Award for Best Actress in Gulzar's Libaas in North Korea (1993) and for Gautam Ghose's Patang at the Taormina Art Festival (1994) in Italy. She has also bagged the Benegal Film Journalists' Association Award for Best Actress (Hindi) in 1999 for Godmother. In 1988, she was awarded with the Padma Shri from the Government of India.

Besides the awards for acting, she has also won several awards for her association with social issues like AIDS, communalism, the plight of slum dwellers in Mumbai, the plight of earthquake victims in Latur and the displaced Kashmiri migrants. She has been the moderate voice among Indian Muslims, advocating the cause of peace, harmony and denouncing terrorism.

In 1998, the actress was appointed the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. In 2006, she was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for her work with the slum dwellers of Mumbai. In 1994, she received the Rajiv Gandhi Award for Excellence of Secularism; the Yash Bhartiya Award, 1988, by the Government of Uttar Pradesh for highlighting women's issues in her work as an actress and activist; the Gandhi International Peace Prize (2006) awarded by the Gandhi Foundation, London. She has also been conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in Art by the Chancellor of the University Brandan Foster by the Leeds Metropolitan University in Yorkshire. It is a mammoth awe-inspiring list of achievements and recognition that Shabana Azmi has received not just in India but abroad as well. Where her personal life is concerned, the actress is happily married to lyricist-poet-scriptwriter Javed Akhtar. The duo got married in December 1984.

After graduating in 1972 from FTII with a gold medal, Shabana Azmi proved her merit with her role as Lakshmi in Ankur. This was Benegal's maiden venture. He had honed his skills with ad films and had made quite a name for himself there. It was a dream debut for this nephew of Guru Dutt. The film catapulted him into national prominence along with Shabana.

Benegal got his chance at making Ankur when Blaze Advertising, an agency which handled the booking of ads in theatres, decided to back Benegal in making a feature film as they had surplus funds to invest and wanted to venture into making films. The director immediately got the script of Ankur out of his closet and began work on the project. He had some of the best collaborating with him on the project. Govind Nihlani was behind the camera with Kamath Ghanekar, Pt Satyadev Dubey had written the dialogues and the music was composed by Vanraj Bhatia.

Incidentally, Shabana was not even the first choice of the director for the role of Lakshmi. Benegal wanted actress Waheeda Rehman to play the role. When she refused, he tried to rope in Anju Mahendru and even the Malayalam actress Sharda was considered for the role before he met Shabana. Even the role played by Priya Tendulkar, that of Saroj, had initially been offered to Shabana's batch-mate Zarina Wahab, who turned it down as wanted to play the role of Lakshmi.!

Ankur is based on an actual incident which took place near Hyderabad. The film talks about the class exploitation which takes place in rural India due to the prevalent feudal system. The real villain in Ankur is not really the character of Surya, the son of the landlord, but the power that he derives from his position.

The film's story is about Surya (Anant Nag), the son of a rich farmer who is forced to give up his studies and sent to look after his family property. His parents get him forcibly married to Saroj (Priya Tendulkar), who is expected to join him soon. All alone at the farmhouse, a bored and lonely Surya finds himself attracted to Lakshmi (Shabana), the maidservant, who is married to a deaf and mute potter called Kishtaya (Sadhu Meher). At first Lakshmi repels his advances. But soon her husband is caught stealing toddy. Humiliated at being caught and punished, he runs away from the village. Laksmi is suddenly left all alone to fend for herself. It is in this moment of weakness that she succumbs to Surya, the power that he wields is, of course, a deciding factor as well. But their relationship does not last long as Saroj arrives suddenly at the farmhouse. She dismisses Lakshmi as she senses there is something amiss. Lakshmi is by now pregnant. Kishtaya comes back and is happy at her impending motherhood, believing the child to be his. Kishtaya goes to meet Surya to ask for work and to share his good news with him. Surya, consumed with guilt, fear, beats up the poor man mercilessly. Lakshmi comes to her husband's rescue and rails at Surya. He cowers from her anger and rushes back inside.

More than just depicting a social reality, the film is about human relations. Surya's father has a mistress and a son by her and Surya hates the sight of them. He does not like the hypocrisy of his father and belives that he is different. But in the end, he finds that he cannot escape his fate. He is in almost the same position as his father. He starts of as being this very liberal man, who causes a stir in the village with his ways. He insists that the untouchable Lakshmi make his tea for him. When Kishtaya is caught stealing in Surya's land, his hair is shaved off and he is paraded around the village on a donkey. Unable to bear this humiliation, Kishtaya runs away. In the end, as Lakshmi rails at him and he realizes that the deaf-and mute potter had come asking him for work, he is shown sitting inside his house, crying. It is a telling picture of a man who started of with so many pretensions and finds himself worse of then ever before. Somewhere, Surya has let himself down.

The star of the film is definitely Shabana. Hers is not the conventional beauty, but there is something luminous about her in this film which is captivating. The actress uses her eyes to good effect and in the last scene, as she confronts Surya, her outburst is so superbly controlled and yet so emotionally charged that it electrifies the atmosphere. Even so many years later, that scene still remains in the mind.

Anant Nag, also making his debut with this film, is very good in most parts as well. But giving Shabana stiff competition is Sadhu Meher as the deaf and mute potter. His is not a very easy role but the actor gives quite a gut-wrenching performance. Ankur gave Hindi cinema Shabana Azmi and Shyam Benegal, the two names who were going to dominate the Seventies. The film won accolades and awards in India as well as abroad. It was Benegal who raised the banner of art cinema high and carried it forward for years with his other films after Ankur like Nishant, Manthan and Bhumika. Ankur may have been his first film as a director, but he reveals a surprising sense of competency in deriving the emotional weight of a scene with utmost subtlety, an art which the Satyajit Ray had mastered to perfection.

The Benegal-Shabana Jodi had many other successful movies to their credit like Nishant, Mandi and Junoon. The most significant thing about them is their dramatic debut. Ankur created enough of a stir at home and abroad as it heralded the arrival of a new star. It put Shabana in a position where she could become the voice and face of art cinema in India, a role she played with much sincerity and passion for much of the Seventies and Eighties. It's been a while that she has been challenged with a role like she was challenged by a film like Ankur, but the flame still burns bright.