Bhumika (film)

Plot

Bhumika tells the life story of an actress, Usha (Smita Patil), who is the granddaughter of a famous female singer of the old tradition from Devadasi community of Goa. Usha's mother (Sulabha Deshpande) is married to an abusive and alcoholic Brahmin. Following his early death, and over her mother's objections, Usha is taken to Bombay by family hanger-on Keshav Dalvi (Amol Palekar) to audition successfully as a singer in a Bombay studio: the first step in a process, watched approvingly by Usha's doting grandmother and with horror by her mother, that will eventually carry her to on-camera adolescent stardom, and to an ill-starred love marriage with Keshav. Usha’s motives for stubbornly pursuing this relationship (culminating in a pre-marital pregnancy) with the unattractive and much older Keshav — who appears to have lusted after her since childhood — are not spelled out. Presumably she feels indebted to him for his loyalty to her family (of which he frequently reminds her) and for her own worldly success; she is also a headstrong girl who clearly enjoys her acting career and is bent on challenging her uptight mother (who opposes the match because Keshav does not belong to their caste, just as she opposes cinema itself because of its presumed disreputability).

Once the two are wed, Usha is shocked to find Keshav continuing to act as her “business manager”, (After effects) arranging starring roles for her opposite heartthrob Rajan (Anant Nag), who is himself in (unrequited) love with her. Since Keshav's other business ventures are unsuccessful, the family remains entirely dependent on Usha's earnings – a fact that Keshav clearly resents. He thus becomes both a jealous husband with a fragile ego and nasty temper, as well as (in effect) a greedy pimp who compels his wife to take risqué work despite her dislike of her co-star and her protests that she "only wants to be a housewife" now that their daughter has been born. Not surprisingly, the relationship becomes increasingly poisoned, particularly by Keshav's suspicion (fed by star-magazine gossip) that she is having an affair with Rajan. Verbally and physically abused by her husband and periodically obliged to live in a hotel, separated from her daughter and mother, the desperately unhappy actress eventually does instigate two unsatisfying liaisons: with the nihilistic and self-centered director Sunil Verma (Naseeruddin Shah), with whom she plots a double-suicide (which he foils), and then with the wealthy businessman Vinayak Kale (Amrish Puri), who keeps her as a pampered mistress on his palatial estate. Here Usha briefly finds a kind of "respectability" as a de facto second wife, earning a measure of love and admiration from Kale's mother, son, and bedridden first wife —but (as she learns one day when she tries to take the boy to a nearby fair) at the cost of even the most rudimentary freedom. Unable to abide by Kale's hypocritical domestic rules, she finds her only hope of escape in the intervention of the hated Keshav, who promptly brings her back to a Bombay festooned with billboards of her own face, and to the same drab hotel and lonely prospects. As Kale's bitter wife remarks to Usha as the latter prepares to leave, "The beds change, the kitchens change. Men's masks change, but men don't change.”

The movie does not clarify the reason why Usha likes, and then dislikes Rajan. The climax of the movie is gloomy, and the viewers are left on their own to seek its message. [1]

Cast

Production

The film was based on autobiography of the doyenne of Marathi theatre and cinema Hansa Wadkar during the 1940s and 50s. The biography was told to journalist Arun Sadhu, who used the title of hit musical,Sangtye Aika (1959) or " "Listen, and I'll Tell."

The film was set in Maharashtra region. Benegal's previous film were based in Andhra region, and since he was unfamiliar with the region, he roped in screenwriter and playwright Girish Karnad to co-write the script. Another noted theatre director and playwright Satyadev Dubey wrote the dialogues. The story moves back and forth across flashbacks to the early life of Wadkar. Apart from the non-linear narrative and the film also employed the film within film device.

Lead actress, a 22-year-old Smita Patil still new to the medium, found the role daunting initially, yet as the filming progress, playing the multi-layered character, she found not only her space the industry and went to win the Best Actress Award for her performance, and today it is considered it one of the best performance of her career.

Crew

Music

All music composed by Vanraj Bhatia.