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A quiet resistance

The film: The Third Wife. The locale: Rural Vietnam in 19th century. The plot: Fourteen-year-old May is chosen as the third wife by rich landowner Hung.

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Ranjita Biswas

The film: The Third Wife. The locale: Rural Vietnam in 19th century. The plot: Fourteen-year-old May is chosen as the third wife by rich landowner Hung. Those days, it was commonly accepted that a man of means would have more than one wife. May is welcomed readily into the family by the two elder wives. The land is lush and fertile; her nascent desire blossoms as she accidentally witnesses a tryst between the eldest wife’s son and the second wife.

Soon May becomes pregnant. She prays for a male child as it would ensure her position in the family. The second wife has only a daughter and so is still to get adequate respect from the husband. But May gives birth to a girl child, dashing her hopes. In this patriarchal setup, she tries to find happiness but she feels closer to the women rather than her husband.

Into this household comes an 11-year-old girl to become wife of the elder wife’s son. He doesn’t want to consummate the marriage as the same is happening against his will. The girl is allowed to return home by the landlord, even remarry, but her father refuses to take her back for the purported loss of face she brings to the family. Rejected by husband and father, the girl hangs herself. As May sits alone in the field with her wailing daughter after the shock of this death, she feels  helpless in this male-dominated society. She looks at the yellow wild flowers she knows are poisonous. Is she going to kill the child and herself too? It seems she wants to put an end of the misery, perhaps thinking that even her daughter might face the same fate when she grows up? The director keeps the scene open for interpretation. In the last scene of the film, young daughter of the second wife is seen sitting by a stream. With a pair of scissors, she snips off her long hair, the symbol of femininity, to a short bob. It is her way of protesting against the system.

Director Ash Mayfair does not go for strident protest but brings home the truth of a girl’s place in a male-dominated society. Behind the lyrical countryside where beautiful women are going about their work, lies a simmering anger which stokes the desire to rebel. The little girl portrays this symbolically.

The film, which was screened at the recently concluded 24th Kolkata International Film Festival, received the Best Film award. The subject of women in gender discriminatory societies echoed in some other films as well, which were screened at the festival. In Iranian film Endless?, a mother roams around in the countryside, looking for her daughter. She washes the colourful dresses of her daughter everyday, dries these and folds these lovingly. People dismiss her as mad because her daughter is no more. The young daughter had immolated herself when her mother was forcing her to marry at a tender age. In her dream, the mother hears her daughter’s voice, “Why are you doing this to me?” and she replies, “Because it was done to me the same way”.

Into this bleak scenario enters a little girl, daughter of a new teacher, who lives in a rented house in the neighbourhood. The girl wants to play with stones and sticks with the boys but they don’t allow because “it is not a girls’ game”. Dejected, she spends more time with the distraught woman. It is through the girl that the woman learns to smile again.

According to director Maryam Zahirimehr, “It’s my belief that films can send a message through the portrayal of human situation, in this case of women in society.” Perhaps, that’s why she puts a question mark in the title as if asking, will this continue endlessly?

In Turkish film Sibel, a 25-year-old speech disabled girl lives with her father and sister in a village near a forest around the Black Sea. She communicates with the whistled language her ancestors used. This is a land steeped in superstition, patriarchal values and family honour code. Sibel is shunned by the villagers, who consider her a sign of bad luck. She tries hard to get accepted by them, working hard at whatever job comes her way. She even goes hunting a wolf that is said to prowl the area. Perhaps then, she would be accepted?

Into her life enters an injured fugitive who gets lost in the forest. She hides him in a cottage but her life becomes miserable when her father discovers it. Only through this stranger’s treatment of her as a fellow human being that Sibel finds self-confidence enough to fight against the oppressive society. 

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