Bulbbul: A Hypnotic Ride into the Horrors of Patriarchy
How Anvita’s Dutt film Bulbbul (2020) turned the age-old story of churails into a complex feminist fairy tale.
A pair of young feet adorned in thick red ‘alta’ dye dangle playfully from a tree branch in the opening shot of Anvita Dutt’s Bulbbul. We meet Bulbbul—the titular heroine—who is perched atop a tree, fiercely clutching onto mangoes she has presumably just plucked. She is bedecked in a bright red Banarasi saree, which is a bit too overwhelming for her short frame. As the camera widens its gaze, we slowly soak in the environ she inhabits. It’s late nineteenth-century Bengal, and the custom of child marriage is being celebrated with pomp and show.
“Why do women wear toe rings?” asks Bulbbul in child-like innocence. She is told that it is done so to squeeze a sensitive nerve in the feet, in order to bar the girl from flying. The irony of these words is inescapable as the wild child is swished away soon after in a palanquin toe ring firmly in place. The sequence, despite its light-heartedness, is laced with an unmistakable sense of foreboding which unfurls slowly as the story gains steam. It exists as a worthy prelude to the larger narrative.
Twenty years later, we meet Bulbbul complete in her transformation. The wide-eyed wild child has come of age and turned into the beguiling mistress of the manor. She is now the sole inhabitant of the palatial mansion. Her childhood companion (and now brother-in-law) Satya Thakur returns to the haveli after a stint in London to the news of men being hounded and killed by a churail—a specifically female ghost—on the prowl. Unwilling to buy into this theory, Satya sets out to uncover the mystery.
The narrative moves back and forth piecing together elements from the past to make sense of the present. How did the carefree Bulbbul turn into this oddly mysterious thakurain? Why does a physician regularly tend to her? Where did the other family members go? Though the film is not particularly concerned with answering these questions, it inevitably ends up positioning itself as a feminist fairy tale (in the words of writer-director Anvita Dutt) and unpacks the pain and misery that have hardened Bulbbul beyond recognition.
Bulbbul is a film about loss of innocence, innocence that is callously snatched away, a film about entrapment and liberation, a film about emotional and psychological isolation, a film driven by ache and longing so intense that it almost spills off the screen. Above all, it is a story of love unfulfilled.
It is to the credit of a stunningly talented filmmaking team led by Dutt, Siddharth Diwan (cinematographer), Meenal Agarwal (production designer) and Amit Trivedi (music composer) that we are sucked into the sublime atmosphere of the film. Bulbull is drenched in shades of crimson with the visceral red being the leitmotif, from Bulbbul’s alta adorned feet, to the moon which takes on a reddish hue, to the blood that flows in abundance. The ornate haveli which is terrifying in its vacuous grandeur adds to the visual aesthetics as does the forest bathed in deep red hues. The women are draped in yards of finest silk and bejeweled in fine traditional gold Bengali jewellery. There is beauty in every nook and corner which is accentuated by Amit Trivedi’s brilliant background score. He brings his characteristic aesthetics to the fore heightening the eeriness and mystique, slowly striking melancholic notes as the story changes course.
This elaborate audio-visual aesthetics pays, at one level, homage to the writer-director’s sensibilities shaped by Bengali literature. Rabindranath Tagore’s celebrated work Chokher Bali is an omnipresent influence not just in naming Bulbbul’s sister-in-law Binodini and her husband Mahendra, but also in the complicated and fraught relationship between Bulbbul and Satya. Dutt even shot large portions of the film at the Bawali Rajbari, a relic of old-world Bengal, which was also the setting of Rituparno Ghosh’s Chokher Bali. Some frames are even reminiscent of the opulent almost picture-perfect aesthetics of Sanjay Leela Bhansali with breathtaking interiors and bedecked heroines.
However, the greater purpose of this superior use of sight and sound is to lull the viewer, swaying our senses towards that which is said, and that which remains unsaid. Most importantly, when juxtaposed with the overbearing opulence the gore, the violence and internal rot that lurks beneath hits hard. This is most apparent in Binodini’s transformation from the bejeweled wily choti-bahu running the haveli, to the shaven-head widow clad in all-white, now relegated to the margins of the society. She is a graphic picture of the ignominy women had to go through—and many still continue to go through—in case of widowhood.
Binodini is perhaps the most layered and the tragic of all characters in Bulbbul, and it is through her backstory that the filmmaker drives home the point of the film. In a heartbreaking scene with Bulbull—who is physically and emotionally broken and battered—Binodini gives away the ‘Badi haveliyon ke bade raaz’—the big secrets of big households: She too was a child-bride like Bulbbul who was married to a mentally incapacitated Mahendra, lured by the finery and reputation that comes with marrying rich. Her only consolation was her illicit relationship with her brother-in-law and the assurance of being the woman of the house.
We learn how tragedy impacts different people differently; tragedy turned Binodini into a shrewd, conniving, and even cruel woman, resolute in her conviction for meting out the same treatment to other women. For Bulbbul, however, her feminine agency takes the form of monstrous rage, a comment on how patriarchy turns women into churails.
Dutt takes the metaphor of the churail—the trope of a woman with inverted feet—and gives it a painful yet ingenious twist. Bulbbul’s deeply-insecure husband physically assaults her on the suspicion of having an affair with Satya to such an extent that her feet are literally upended. The camera meticulously follows Bulbbul’s feet right from the very first frame of the film. Dutt implies that society can turn woman into witches, a fate they would never choose willingly.
Bulbbul is a film that loves parallels. Binodini suffers as a bride, and she makes Bulbbul suffer too. She even asks Bulbbul to stay quiet and keep up the pretense, just as she was taught as a young bride. She taunts Bulbbul for not getting enough jewelry from her mother’s home, and in a cruel irony of fate, she snatches all her ornaments from Bulbbul. Indranil is jealous of Satya, Satya is jealous of Sudip. Bulbbul loves horror stories, her life literally becomes one. As children, Satya and Bulbbul begin writing a story together, but it remains complete; years later, the story of their lives is incomplete, too. He is the boy who gave Bulbbul company in the palanquin, who shared her love for stories, who she considers her true companion, and eventually lets her down the most. “Tum sab ek jaise ho,’ she exclaims at him, ‘All you men are the same,’ on encountering Satya’s deep-seated misogyny.
As much as a story about feminine strength, Bulbbul is also a story about masculine vulnerability. Bulbbul’s jealous husband and the emotionally-stunted Satya sit on opposite ends of the spectrum. Her husband is on the brink of getting subsumed into toxic masculinity, while Satya is too confused of his feelings for Bulbbul.
When Satya is packed off to London, Bulbbul is distraught and almost inconsolable. He, on the other hand, is elated. While she cannot bear the thought of being separated from her childhood companion, he couldn’t be happier. He leaves, and just as unexpectedly, he returns one fine day. Now surprised by Bulbbul’s transformation, he longs for the “choti si bahu” he had left behind, going green in envy every time he sees her with Sudip. He chides her for meeting Sudip, and even tells her that she must be sent back to her parental home for this transgression, inflicting deepest emotional trauma on Bulbbul.
And then there is Sudip, who is so besotted with Bulbbul that he starts idealizing her as a devi. There is no single self-assured, confident man in the film who is able to appreciate women—if not love them—for who they are, in all their humanity.
Bulbbul doesn’t always provide us the answers we seek, but it leads us to the questions that we should be asking ourselves. What is the redemption for women in a world where they have been broken? A ‘churail’, perhaps, is not then a shriek of horror, but a woman crusading for justice.
Bulbbul is a laudable addition to Clean Slate Filmz—the production outfit helmed by Anushka Sharma and Karnesh Ssharma—that has in its oeuvre films such as Phillauri and Pari. Despite being positioned as horror supernatural fantasy films, these are predominantly tales of feminist triumph, with strong undertones of tragic, unfinished, and untested romance. Bulbbul fits the bill perfectly, and is an amalgamation of a number of genres: period fantasy, fantasy folk fiction, horror, supernatural thriller, and feminist fable. It is all these genres, and yet it stands on its one entirely, just like Pari and Phillauri. It has elements of horror, but can’t be called a ‘horror film’ generally.
Bulbbul is a film about loss of innocence, innocence that is callously snatched away, a film about entrapment and liberation, a film about emotional and psychological isolation, a film driven by ache and longing so intense that it almost spills off the screen. Above all, it is a story of love unfulfilled. “Kahaani puri kaise hogi?” asks a teary eyed Bulbbul, ‘How will the story be completed?’. It doesn’t—and that’s what haunts the characters and the viewers long after the end credits roll.
For a story which falls into several predictable traps of the genre earlier on, Bulbbul’s strength is in its execution of its story and it’s casting. The Laila Majnu (2018) pair Avinash Tiwary and Tripti Dimri (they play star-crossed lovers yet again, albeit in a completely different setting) is immensely effective as Satya and Bulbbul—this time the heavy lifting is done by Dimri. She is sincere in her portrayal of Bulbbul, channelizing both vulnerability and rage in equal measure. Paoli Dam is brilliant as Binodini, switching smoothly between the sultry seductress and desolate widow. Parambrata Chattopadhyay as Sudip is expectedly self-assured. But it is Rahul Bose who is terrific as the mentally-challenged Mahendra, and the resentful Indranil, exuding both madness and toxicity with unsettling effortlessness.
Though the revenge motif eulogized by the film is both troubling and liberating, it is an affordance the film can exploit (and it does) by virtue of being in the fantasy genre. I couldn’t help but wonder what could be the recourse available to thousands of women facing unending cruelty and subjugation on a daily basis, something that forms the premise of a brave web-series coincidentally titled Churails currently streaming on Zee5.
Bulbbul doesn’t always provide us the answers we seek, but it leads us to the questions that we should be asking ourselves. What is the redemption for women in a world where they have been broken to a point of frustration, of submission, to be neurotic, hysterical, and self-effacing? A ‘churail’, perhaps, is not then a shriek of horror, but a woman crusading for justice.
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Harshita Murarka is a communications professional currently associated with a UK-based firm. She holds a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Delhi and a Master’s in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has an inclination towards arts, culture and Hindi cinema which leads to occasional stints in writing. You can find her on Instagram: @nectar_in_a_sieve and Twitter: @HarshitaMurarka.
