Symbolism and Bhumika

            Based loosely on the life and autobiography of 1940’s Marathi screen actress Hansa Wadkar, Bhumika concerns the life and career of Usha, a young actress who struggles to find identity and self-fulfillment. Usha’s mother, Shantabai, doesn’t want her to be a singer and actress, but poverty compels her family to send her to work in a movie studio. Usha rebels against her mother’s imperialness in her choice of career as well as her choice in love. She continues to act, and marries Keshav, an older man whose leeches off of Usha’s success. Usha wants to be her own person, but doesn’t know what kind of person she wants to be; is she an actress or a mother, a lover or a fighter?

The theme of time is an important element of the film. When Keshav confronts Usha after she returns from the studio at the opening of the film a ticking clock echoes in the background. The clock roots the scene in the now, which Benegal proceeds to undercut through the use of flashback. Black and white scenes of Usha’s past are juxtaposed with full color scenes of present day. Time and again we return to the same dance scene that opens the movie. This endless cycle – of film, romantic tryst, followed by romantic disillusionment – propels the plot of the movie forward, and speaks to the notion that Usha is stuck in time. She keeps trying to leave the film industry to start a family, but she keeps coming back. She is a prisoner to the role that she has been forced to play by first her family, then Keshav, and later Kale. It is only in the theater that her identity takes form.

Throughout the film we see many shots that expose the technical details of the film industry. We see shots of boom mikes, directors coming in and out of shots, sound recorders, all of the unseen elements that work together to create a film. The behind the scenes shots demystify the glamour of the film industry, and allow the audience to view the dirty underbelly of film. When we are first introduced to the movie studio it is depicted as a dirty, ill-kempt place, a place of sin and ill repute. Villainous laughter from an actor shooting a scene on one of the lots creates an eerie atmosphere. Later when Usha and Keshav go to a film together Keshav puts his arm around Usha in the dark theater. This lustful act in the shadowy environment of the movie theater highlights the Keshav and Usha’s unhealthy relationship; she is his captive, beholden to work the theater’s to keep the family solvent. Even after Usha becomes a star, we see a montage of her film roles, and in all of them she is a persecuted or pitiable woman. She becomes a metaphor for the modern Indian woman, a woman who is educated and independently wealthy, but still subservient to the patriarchy of Indian society.

Mirrors also play an important role in the film. When Usha first arrives at the film studio where she will one day work we see an actress fixing her appearance in a mirror. The actress is glamorous and beautiful, but her beauty feels impersonal and transient, which is underscored by an actor rehearsing his lines in the background, “I will destroy your beauty to ashes. Fire. Fire.” Beauty and free will are pictured as a threat to men’s power, and mirrors act as a means of reflecting back the inadequacies we notice about ourselves. When Usha’s costar Rajan is pictured staring at his image in the mirror it is implied that he sees a man that he does not like. He sees a coward, a man unable of telling Usha how he truly feels. Sunil puts it best when he says to Usha, “Your lovers are mere mirrors. And you are that idol locked in the mirror. You are worried that a new experience does not break that idol into pieces.” Mirrors show who we are rather than how we would like to be seen.

In one of my favorite shots Usha is filming a scene at the studio. She messes up a pose, and the choreographer steps in to show her how to properly perform the pose. The implication is that she doesn’t know what her role is or how she is supposed to act. She is torn by her desire to rebel against her mother and make her own choices, and her desire to a mother and leave the film industry behind. She is full of contradictions, and it is in celebration of contradictions that the film captures some of its most poignant moments.