The two films that were released this year based on the life of Ranibai (Queen) of Jhansi make for an interesting discussion of how culturally relevant industry product and fringe foreign projects greatly impact not only the look and feel of the movie, but nearly every minute decision that goes into its production. The first is a large-budget Bollywood biopic titled Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, which released in January. The second is the low-budget Hollywood drama The Warrior Queen of Jhansi. While I will focus more on the second for the purposes of this review, it’s important to draw attention to how every aspect of the latter is better informed when compared with the former.
A Surprisingly Competent Movie from Nowhere
The Warrior Queen of Jhansi is a movie most people probably didn’t know even existed or was released in American theaters by an actual Hollywood studio this year. There was zero promotion for it and it came and went within a single week. It’s not surprising then that I was literally the only person at my screening.
The quick assumptions that can easily start populating the mind for a movie like this, ranging from dread over bad acting to bad effects, and comparing and wagering these with the runtime, can shape conclusions about the movie that create a bias before even actually watching it. It simply feels better when we’re reviewing or watching a film that has a strong financial backing, good marketing campaign and draws in audiences above the single digits. But The Warrior Queen of the Jhansi is actually better than its much more endowed Bollywood counterpart, even if it doesn’t quite qualify as a great movie.
Making the Most of Little
One major aspect of its production is that its lack of funding resulted in much more interesting artistic choices. Battle sequences could not be CGI-ed in, and so much of what happens resembles something that takes cues from David Lean. Large panoramic scopes of castles and battalion lines juxtaposed with quick and intimate one on one combat shots. Battles feature more talking and strategizing among small groups than the sweeping shots of armies charging at each other. The symbolism of chess (we see several shots of chess-boards intercut with generals performing military debriefs) may be cheesy and obvious, but a movie that is about war and can’t rely on its accurate or effective display must present itself through more metaphorical means.
Taking into account how Manikarnika, offered all the resources of Bollywood growing industry and technological capabilities, turned every sequence, even minute conversations and average horse-rides into an over-produced mess, it is quite respectable that The Warrior Queen of Jhansi could offer the same in a much subtler way and at a much breezier pace.
Hitting the Bare Minimum Marks
It is rather sad that a low-budget Hollywood offering was able to navigate the political and racial overtones of Indian resistance under British colonialism with much more aplomb than the Bollywood film could. The Warrior Queen of Jhansi is written and directed by Indian choreographer and arts educator Swati Bhise and it is credit to her that the difficult position of Ranibai of Jhansi is displayed well and with a respect for her cleverness and leadership while acknowledging her faults and mistakes. Manikarnika on the other hand, is a jingoistic melodrama that patronizes its Indians as meek and helpless in the face of colonial brutality, in need of a monarch’s sacred and holy power (she is portrayed the way Odysseus is in Homer’s poems).
If Bhise’s film is much less of a visual treat than the Bollywood Manikarnika, it is at least a film that is made by an adult with a grown-up understanding of India’s history under British rule. For the lack of good acting, mostly resulting from poor dialogue, the movie at least manages to represent its characters as genuinely believable figures of a real history. That’s the least you can ask for from a historical biopic.
The Warrior Queen of Jhansi released in theaters in the United States on November 15, 2019.
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