Kinshuk Surjan’s Marching in the Dark is dedicated to the women farmers whose husbands and sons have killed themselves over the past two decades. Surjan’s Marathi-language debut documentary profiles one such woman from Maharashtra, who bears with heroic courage the burden of sudden widowhood in a conservative milieu.
The context for Sanjivani Bhure’s precarious situation is deftly laid out in the opening scenes. At an auction, cultivators are paid a pittance for their produce.
Farmers never get what they deserve, remarks an elderly man. We then meet the embodiment of the consequences of this unfair rate fixing.
Sanjivani is hard at work in a field, harvesting the first of several crops that she hopes will improve her family’s fortunes. With a son and daughter to worry about after her debt-ridden husband’s death by suicide, Sanjivani turns to counselling sessions run by a non-governmental group for women like her.
In the women’s anger and anguish, their frustration but also their fortitude, Sanjivani finds the strength to not only cope with her own pain, but also seek alternatives to farming. “Marching in the Dark” turns out to be an inadequate translation of the film’s Marathi title Andharatlya Mashali, or Flames in the Darkness.
The 105-minute documentary is being shown at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 18-23). From the outset, Surjan builds a bridge between his subjects and viewers by opting for an intimate and tender filming style.
Cinematographers Leena Patoli, Carl Rottiers and Vishal Vittal crouch in the fields and squat by chairs and beds to bring us on eye level with the characters. The camera is often inches away from Sanjivani’s expressive face, especially in a lovely sequence where she is lying down next to her children, playing along with their games.
The seemingly invisible camera also picks up the tensions that appear to be simmering in Sanjivani’s household. Her daughter’s hurt at being excluded from a round of gifts, the reaction of Sanjivani’s family when she steps out of the house, the sense of abandonment she feels – Surjan and his crew capture an all-too-familiar family dynamic that provides little succour to a grieving woman.
The sessions run by the NGO are revealing, especially when the women air their unfiltered thoughts on the restrictions placed on them. You need to thump your sandals loudly and proudly and keep going, a counsellor tells the women. But coping is hard in a culture that cannot always distinguish between stoicism over the dead and indifference towards the living.
While acknowledging the role played by poor returns on produce and unpayable debts, Marching in the Dark also draws attention distinguishes to the sisterhood among the survivors. Behind the statistics are flesh-and-blood individuals struggling to get on with their days, the documentary suggests.
The film goes beyond the what-is-the-use-of-crying hardiness to unearth the psychological effects of the suicides on the women. We get to hear stories that are not always heard, from women who are rarely counted among the victims of an agricultural crisis.
Kinshuk Surjan’s empathy and palpable affection for the women, especially for Sanjivani, makes them come vividly alive.
Yet, the fiction-style scripted structure, which is increasingly popular in human interest documentaries, has a neatness and precision that can be unsettling.
It’s hard to tell whether the overall lack of emotional drama – the hushed whispering, the economically shed tears – stems from the actual behaviour of the subjects or the approach of the filmmakers. The people behind the support group that is doing such remarkable work in this corner of Maharashtra are barely explored.
The documentary’s visuals have been graded to resemble colourised black-and-white photographs. This stark, slightly unnatural look adds yet another fictional touch to a film that relies heavily on candid moments.
The tight control over a raging problem is most successful when in the company of Sanjivani. The documentary couldn’t have asked for a more compelling heroine, who wows with her simplicity and bravery. The closing credits read: “A Film by Kinshuk Surjan. With Sanjivani Bhure.”
One of the most memorable scenes sees Sanjivani at her sewing machine. She hesitates, she nearly breaks down and then she gathers herself. The night is dark, but the lights are burning bright too.
