This is perhaps a rare instance where Gopalrao seems to have oppressed her and knowingly so. Crowd-pleasing in its very design, the moment is one that stimulates thunderous applause as you see the young woman standing up for her choice of religion. In one of the key sequences, Anandi refuses to get converted to Christianity. Seen almost fully through the man’s eyes, the film, as a result, takes light years to provide some agency to its female protagonist. For a fact, Anandi Gopal, rarely declares the thoughts that run through the timid young girl’s mind. A terrified Anandi replies, “It’s alright,” It was never really the will of Anandi to live this unusual life that was orchestrated by the man of her life.

He repeats the line with double the aggression.

“I am sorry,” says he, expecting a response in the English language. In one of the scenes, Gopalrao is seen apologizing to Anandi for a misgiving. You see the man exert verbal pressure and intimidate the child bride in a way that a discompassionate teacher would do to a student. As a result, her dissent towards Gopalrao’s progressive ideas wanders on the periphery without ever really soaring.īesides the need to assimilate ideas from the texts, a good part of Anandi Gopal is spent in Gopalrao educating his wife about her fundamental rights – long before they had it all documented in the Indian constitution. The writers attempt to lend layers to her silences which do not fully work. A devout widow, the mother-in-law is a picture of austerity. Not very late after Anandi reaches her husband’s home, she sees herself building a family with her husband’s deceased wife’s mother and also with his son, Krushna. That way, Anandi Gopal in various ways becomes a film about a man’s quest to bring about change with education as opposed to the titular character’s penchant to learn. Her husband Gopalrao, a widower, is a post office clerk with an adept hunger to seek knowledge – for himself and more so for the woman in his life.

Married off at a nascent age as per tradition, Yamuna is rechristened Anandi on the day she exchanges vows. This unusual framework is from where director Sameer Vidwans develops his unexpectedly witty Marathi biographical drama, Anandi Gopal.īased on the life of India’s first practising female physician Anandibai Gopalrao Joshi, the film, on the surface, is a basic empowerment tale. It might not even be the right word to describe the man who desired anything but a perfect housewife in Yamuna. Now, from the looks of it, it isn’t a family that might comprehend the gist of the word. The matchmaker describes the prospective groom as ‘whimsical’.

It is nineteenth-century British India and a moderate Hindu family from Kalyan, Maharashtra is discussing an alliance for their 9-year-old daughter Yamuna.

Anandi gopal film