Angry Young Men Aside, the Women of Indian Cinema Are Starting to Get Angrier

For the longest time, feminine anger was a rarity to see in Indian cinema.

In ‘Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture’, Lyz Lenz writes, “We speak of men and their rage as if it I laudable. ‘Men just get mad and push each other and it's over’, we say. ‘Women are just b**ches; they never let it go.’"

"That's because we never can let it go. Because where would we put it? What system? What faith? What institution has room? Has patience? Has understanding for an angry woman?”

Excerpt from ‘Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture’

While the past few years have been good for films that explore feminine anger and agency beyond the female lead being a love interest or victim, that wasn’t always the case. 

For the longest time, and that is not to say that things have completely changed now, there was no space for women to be angry in Indian cinema. That is not to say that women were never wronged. Often, violence against and exploitation of women were used as catalysts for the hero to complete his journey. 

Women were painted as damsels in distress waiting for their male saviour; almost every female character had her version of “Mere Karan Arjun aayenge” (My Karan and Arjun will come to save me). More often than not, the villain would abduct or cause immediate harm to the female protagonist and the hypermasculine hero would come waltzing by to save her following a fight sequence and monologue.

And yet, there was a section of Indian filmmakers who understood the need to afford women the agency and space to express anger (and revenge).

The earliest example of this that I remember is Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala. Sonbai (Smita Patil) bands together with her female friends to fight the abusive subedar (Naseeruddin Shah). The film brilliantly explores patriarchy, sexism, and above all, feminine rage. The film’s last scene is one of my all-time favourites.

Films like Smita Patil’s Bhumika and Arth, and Shabana Azmi’s Mandi are examples of women channeling rage to challenge or tackle a system that is designed to put them at a disadvantage.

These films often tackled other themes like agency, casteism, class divide, poverty, and feudal exploitation.

In Ankur, for instance, a Dalit woman Lakshmi’s anger acts as a catalyst for an uprising against the Brahmanical feudal system.

The 70s and 80s were rife with the male saviour in films, especially since the ‘angry young man’ trope was gaining traction. And yet Rekha, for one, continued to make films that one would call ‘woman-led’. 

Her 1988 film Khoon Bhari Maang is often considered to be one of her best roles and is incidentally a story of a woman seeking revenge against everyone who wronged her. 

A filmmaker who really understood feminine rage and what pushes women to it is Deepa Mehta, best known for her trilogy Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005).

All her films, often as harrowing as they are hopeful, explore how women are often neglected and pushed to their limit.

Because they’re often taken for granted, women would use their anger as a way to escape their circumstances or at least attempt to.

In the 2010s, there has been a rise in films about women, and many written and/or directed by women. And considering that the world is a tough place for minorities, most of these films deal with rage and vengeance (as they should).

Alankrita Shrivastava’s 2016 film Lipstick Under My Burkha follows four women (played by Ratna Pathak Shah, Aahana Kumra, Konkona Sensharma, and Plabita Borthakur) who find ways to tackle the oppressive systems they’re in by little acts of rebellion.

Some films assume that feminine anger can only exist within the realm of being wronged and committing murder. Realistically, feminine rage exists in all aspects of life and, like mentioned above, in acts of rebellion. 

In Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen, the wife’s (Nimisha Sajayan) act of throwing dirty water at her husband and father-in-law is such an act of rebellion. In Neeraj Ghaywan's Juice, Manju (Shefali Shah) getting a glass of juice and sitting in front of the cooler with the ‘men of the house’ is an act of rebellion. 

In Advait Chandan’s Secret Superstar, several instances of Najma’s rebellion even as she makes compromises for her and her daughter’s safety, play a pivotal role in the latter’s success.

Vidya Balan, too, has changed the face of what a Bollywood ‘heroine’ is supposed to be, especially by choosing scripts that often placed women in the forefront. Films like Ishqiya, The Dirty Picture, and Kahaani cemented her position as an actor who understood what protest against a system looks like on screen.

Films like Thappad and NH 10 also portray different shades of female anger. While the latter is a more direct revenge saga, the former explores how normalised domestic violence is in society and how difficult justice can be to get. 

Another filmmaker, Anvitaa Dutt, mixed the supernatural with the real world. In Bulbbul, she delved into the very real prevalence of sexual and physical violence against women and used the daunting supernatural figure of a woman to mete out punishment.

One of the film’s most effective scenes shows how a young girl doesn’t feel fear around the entity, representing how righteous feminine rage (leveled against patriarchy) is often a consequence and threatens only those it must. A similar theme finds itself reflected in Stree.

Dutt’s next Qala explores an almost silent rage which bubbles over into crime while dealing with the issue of generational trauma and guilt.

More recently, Alia Bhatt and Shefali Shah’s Darlings deals with domestic abuse and female agency beautifully in a dark comedy. It also addresses why most women find it difficult to leave abusive relationships and how it’s not always a viable or safe option.

Last but not the least, Saas, Bahu aur Flamingo. Homi Adajania’s deliciously campy offering stars Dimple Kapadia, Radhika Madan, Isha Talwar, and Angira Dhar.

The show follows the lives of a matriarch Savitri (Kapadia) and her daughter and daughters-in-law who run a drug cartel. The show inspects how feminism comes in different shades and has changed over generations.

Despite the fact that it falls into the old trope of putting some of the women through horrific abuse to give them their hero’s journeys, the women in Saas, Bahu aur Flamingo have agency, spark, and fire. They have a burning need to defy expectations.

Women are often told they can’t do things – can’t drive, can’t work, can’t walk out of their homes without supervision, can’t raise their voice, can’t laugh too loudly, can’t study. Can’t, can’t can’t. 

But every time a film is made with women who are angry and are given space to express this anger, mostly through rebellion, a resounding message goes out: women can and they will.