Devi: Short Film Review
- Diya Jain
- Apr 1, 2020
- 2 min read
Devi
Director: Priyanka Banerjee
Mar 2, 2020
Run Time: 13:01 min
Large Short Films
The discussion unfolds through a loud conversation amongst rape victims, trapped in a house as they have no where else to go. Banerjee approaches the subject matter in a rather unconventional method. The audience sees what comes after the rape, the pain, the situation, the tragedy. She makes the smart choice of putting people from a variety of walks of life—age groups, status, religious backgrounds—into one room. Rape doesn’t see difference. The beasts that our society calls rapists, don’t see difference. While that is true, we also get a chance to understand that that difference is also absent amongst rapists. The lack of a proper education, or whatever might the case be, rapists can rise from any walks of life. It can happen to anyone, by anyone. She also highlights that the mental, emotional struggles associated with rape can’t be compared between people. While Banerjee’s film speaks to statistics in India, it is also always good to acknowledge rape and rapist relationships can exist in opposite gender roles as well. The effects of situations like these lie of a greyscale, a spectrum different for all, that is heavily dependent on the person, their personal experiences and development throughout their lifetime.
Devi is packed with fantastic actors who perform above and beyond to give life to the writing. Some scenes seem too on the nose and staged, like the television starting and stopping, or the throwing of the book in anger. They, nonetheless, don’t subtract anything from the film and remain benign to the overall message.
We cannot deny identity and greed. The sad truth is that these are regular motives that keep an individual going. The entirety of the film is a conversation around the victim waiting outside—a little girl. When the viewers are introduced to this character in the last scene, feelings of simultaneous guilt, anger, and an indescribable self-loathing for our qualities of greed are evoked. While the women constantly bicker in an attempt to fulfill these factors, the only thing that pulls the strings to unite them is a gentle reminder of their commonalities—their victimized womanhood.
4/5
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