Shyam Benegal's characters possessed all the qualities that make someone... human. They were flawed and conflicted individuals in constant tug-of-war with their circumstances that were beyond their control. Some of these characters may not seem sympathetic at first because of the questionable choices they make — haven't we all? — but we find so much to admire in them regardless.
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Take, for instance, Benegal’s Usha from Bhumika — an actress who finds great success playing various characters on-screen but fails terribly at playing a few off-screen, played by an aptly cast Smita Patil. The film, loosely based on the life of Hansa Wadkar, a well-known Marathi actress of the 1940s, fetched Smita her first National Film award. She played Usha as an unconventional, fiercely independent young woman who sought companionship in all the wrong places. Her real life runs in complete contrast to her silver screen life. She painfully realises that she isn’t cut out for long-term commitments. The atmosphere of every household she ends up in is stiflingly restrictive and patriarchal. She fails to find in other men the happiness and fulfilment that she so desperately seeks. Every experience she undergoes is both extremely humiliating and frustrating.
I mention Smita Patil in particular because she and Benegal notably brought a new dimension to the face of India's parallel cinema movement. Benegal discovered her during her stint as a television newsreader and gifted her with some of his strongest scripts, beginning with Charandas Chor, which made the public take notice of her. She appeared in six of his features that turned him into an indie cinema force to be reckoned with. What was it that Benegal saw in her?
In a recent interview with Filmfare, he remembered Smita as "a person without affectation and never saw herself as a star. She’d jump to move the light, get someone a glass of water and run to do odd jobs on the set. She was simple in her tastes and never hankered after anything. She came from such a background; her mother was a social worker and worked for slums and NGOs. Also, she was independent and forward-thinking, a rebel of sorts. She had bits of her in all her characters."
A rebel of sorts... The same can be said of Benegal also, can't we? A common ground. For Smita Patil, he wrote distinct female characters with varying screen times; he infused them with characteristics other women might have aspired for or extraordinarily trying circumstances they could deeply identify with. The feisty head of the village woman in Manthan, the helpless witness to disturbing developments in her household in Nishant, or the musically inclined inhabitant of a brothel who shockingly learns of her parentage in Mandi... Benegal could certainly be credited with demonstrating to serious moviegoers in a short time, before any other filmmaker, many striking shades of Smita Patil and establishing her as a bonafide, incredibly perceptive performer