Hyde Park Pick: Santosh

For some reason, maybe due to being overwhelmed by bleak headlines, I’ve gone from being an avid watcher of Scandinavian crime dramas like Wallander, The Killing and The Bridge, to shying away from the genre altogether. However, Santosh was very much worth breaking from my recent aversion to crime thrillers. It’s incredibly gripping but does so much more than many other films and programmes from this genre and avoids predictable tropes.

The film has a fascinating premise where a widow, Santosh, inherits her late husband’s job as a police officer – something I found even more fascinating when I read that this is a real government scheme in India. To inform this narrative, the director, Sandhya Suri, spoke to many women who had experienced this scheme in real life. She was struck by how dramatic the trajectory of this transition was for many. Some were housewives who rarely left the house without their husbands and then became widows and police officers.

Coming from a background of documentary-making, authenticity is very important to Suri and she does a brilliant job of achieving realistic characters by casting some non-professional actors. She also offers a glimpse into some shocking truths in India where police corruption and brutality are a massive problem, as well as hugely problematic casteism, religious discrimination and pervasive misogyny. With subjects like these that Indian government bodies would not want Suri (and the world via her lens) to be privy to, perhaps Suri realised she had to adopt fiction as her tool to tell this story. Amazingly this is her fiction feature debut even though its quality makes that hard to believe!

Suri offers many fascinating yet devastating insights into sexism Indian women have to deal with every day. For example, after her husband’s death, Santosh’s family expect her in-laws to take her in and discuss her as a kind of property on her behalf rather than giving her any agency even though she is in the room. Then, even when Santosh does take on what may be assumed to be a powerful role as a police officer, she is belittled by male colleagues and laughed at when she wants to help an illiterate man report a crime.

Shahana Goswami was a brilliant choice to play the lead role, Santosh, as she conveys so much horror at what she witnesses through her expressions and can say so much with her eyes alone. She finds herself in a maddening situation where she’s surrounded by injustice within a police force who have none of the moral standards they are meant to uphold in society.

It doesn’t feel like Suri dictates one concrete message we should come away with and instead leaves the film more open to interpretation. However, it definitely feels like she is shining a critical light on police violence, perhaps in dialogue with Bollywood films where this is strangely often glorified. In some scenes, Suri uses Bollywood film music maybe to draw attention to this intention.

The film is so absorbing that I think I may have forgotten to breathe throughout and shared many of Santosh’s wide-eyed expressions while watching and beyond. It is rich in details and images that will stay with me – like the food put out for Santosh’s husband’s soul in the shradh ritual to bring him peace in the afterlife. Moments like this where Santosh is given time to grieve and acknowledge her husband’s death feel very limited which made me feel even more deeply for her as she was rushed into taking on her husband’s role, a very brutal role at that, in order to survive.

The cinematography is striking throughout but especially in the final scene which replays in my mind as I think about the film. So much of this powerful, thought-provoking feature will stay with me long after watching and will leave me contemplating the blurred moral lines we often contend with and should bring into focus more often. I’m very excited that we’ll get a deeper insight into Santosh thanks to having the excellent director join us for a Q&A with Reclaim the Frame at our preview screening on Thursday 20th March.

You can book tickets to our preview director Q&A screening on Thu 20 Mar at 6pm here and further screenings will be added soon.