‘Santosh’ Review: An Unfiltered, Complex Portrayal Of The Deep-Rooted Sexism And Misogyny In Rural India

Misogyny, sexism and male chauvinism have been running deep in society for decades. They take place all over the world in all walks of life. Worldwide, women have to deal with the prejudices of men on both personal and professional levels. When watching Santosh, it seems that a change in that way of thinking and behaving is still nowhere near. While this UK entry for the 97th Academy Awards entry by writer/director Sandhya Suri (I for India, Around India with a Movie Camera) tackles the disturbing ways women are being treated, even women in a function of power, bluntly and relentlessly, its impact doesn’t fully come through.

The strong and almost unbreakable woman in this painfully dark and completely true-to-life character study is Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami), who lives in a small village in India. When her cop husband dies, she’s on the verge of losing her home. However, there’s one law that could prevent this from happening. If she accepts this ‘compassionate employment’ and takes on her husband’s job, she can keep receiving his salary, preventing homelessness and having the right to freedom of movement. Becoming a female cop at the age of twenty-eight, but Santosh inherits her late husband’s job almost forcefully.

Soon, she realizes that she is being treated entirely differently than her male counterpart, despite executing the exact same job as her husband. Quietly, anxiously and unfiltered portrayed by Goswami (Zwigato, Firaaq), Santosh daily feels the sexism, exploitation, abuse of power and intimidation by her colleagues. While the humiliations are just enough to stomach, it’s clear that if things continue like this, Santosh will never find her place in the force. That is until veteran Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) presents herself at the local police to take over the investigation of the murder of a local girl. While Santosh’s superiors only want a superficial investigation – the girl is from a lower caste, so why waste time, resources and money on her – Geeta will leave no stone unturned to find the truth.

Geeta’s arrival doesn’t only result in Santosh finally getting the respect she deserves but also in a tremendous on-screen dynamic between Goswami and Rajwar (Gullak, Panchayat). A deep on-screen friendship develops when the women start to strive for justice and unite to deflect the male toxicity. While the policewomen have the same goal, their personalities and the accompanying performances couldn’t be further apart.

Goswami gives a quiet, subtle, but effective performance because. While Santosh sees the dreadful things happening in the force and the community, she never dares to speak up. She never verbalizes how she feels about the brutal ways her male counterparts treat both potential suspects and victims, the games of power she faces and the well-rooted corruption. Because of Santosh’s silence, Goswami has to convey her character’s feelings with expressive looks. This way of delivering emotions only partly works. Yes, you feel how Santosh truly feels about the harsh reality she faces. Still, her not speaking up makes Santosh feel like a passive cop who undergoes the indignities without standing up for herself and women.

That passive feeling and the calmer presence surrounding Goswami’s performance decrease the overall energy of Suri’s full-length directional debut. Yes, there’s sometimes fact-pasted, more actiony hand-held cinematography, but the longer, lingering, and calmer shots depicting ordinary life take the overhand. Therefore, Santosh’s genuinely honest contemporary social drama element is much more present than the political crime thriller one. There’s undoubtedly some genre mixing, but the balance tilts towards the feature’s more social reality aspect. Santosh’s silence could explain Suri’s background as a documentary maker, or maybe it’s a mixture of both.

When Santosh is being joined by the authoritarian Greeta, the movie finds its power (in more than one way). Unlike Santosh, Greeta can count on the utmost respect from every policeman. While they fear her, they also crave her friendship and collegialism. That is because they recognize themselves in her until a certain point. She has some male tendencies and climbed up the ladder by knowing exactly what kind of male-dominated world she has to deal with. She knows when to look the other way and when to enforce the proper punishment according to her male counterparts. This results in her working comfortably together with her colleagues. All while she takes Santosh under her wings and helps her navigate through the unequal workplace and the oppressed society. Greeta being more well-versed and authoritarian than her rookie results in Rajwar giving a much more empowering, dominating and vigorous performance than Goswami.

While the social commentary element of this feature trumps the thriller elements because of the heard-edge realistic take on the story, Santosh still succeeds in becoming a thrilling, powerful, and politically challenging film. That is because of the multifaceted performances, the compelling visualizing of the complex themes, and the unfiltered portrayal of the deep-rooted sexism and misogyny in rural India and the rest of the world.

Santosh is out now in theatres courtesy of Metrograph Pictures