MARIANNE AND JULIANNE

Margarethe Von Trotta’s Marianne and Julianne or Die Bleierne Zeit (1981) is on of the films that made Von Trotta receive large critical acclaim. Von Trotta is known for basing her films on a political narrative or having a strong feminist protagonist. Von Trotta tends to also pay attention to the relationships between female characters in her films and exploring the intimacy of these relationships.

Marianne and Juliane is a film based on a political narrative while also having a strong female protagonist which was not largely seen in media, but while being one of her most known works, it also stands as a bit of a controversial work, especially in the regard of the relationship between the two protagonists of this film, sisters Marianne and Juliane.

It is based on the real story of Gudrun Ennslin who was a member of the Baader meinhof group and talks about her and her life through the perspective of her sister- Christiane Ensslin.

The film itself is set in the 1970’s and revolves around the story of two sisters who somehow keep getting involved in each other lives. Juliane is the older sister who as a child seemed to be the more rebellious or more outspoken child while Marianne who as a young girl did everything that would make her parents happy, she would always conform, got married, had a child and so on so forth. Till now it may seem like Mariane is the ideal child but as she grows up, she ends up leaving her husband and child to join an underground political organization. Through being a part of this organization Mariane gets involved in several illegal activities. While this is happening, we see Juliane trying to understand what made Mariane take the steps she has taken and we see the relationship of the two sisters slowly come through. Through the course of the film, we see Marianes differs endevaours and julianes reactions to them. At one point we see mariane raid julianes house with more people from her association and right after that is arrested and kept in extremely inhumane conditions until we see her death, which is first assumed to be suicide. Juliane ends up taking custody of mariane’s son ad tries to model her own life after mariane’s and sets out to understand what really happened.

Over all of this what we see stand out throughout this film how juliane seems to have never ending love for her sister, almost to the extent that she would do anything for her. If it wasn’t for the focus on the relationship between the two sisters and the authenticity or the story ( as it is based on a true story) the film could have been perceived as a trival attempt to showcase political feminism. But as we see the focus on not only several societal issues but also each sister’s personal life and issues, Von Trotta has created a perfect amalgamation of politics and feminism for a time where new German cinema was still not fully understood.

REPRESENTATION IN FILM

KAL HO NA HO

Kal ho na ho is a film that has been around since I could barely walk, it’s a film that my entire family would watch together or my best friends or I would talk about at school while gawking over how handsome we though Shahruk Khan was. But one thing I never realized earlier while watching this is film is the amount of hidden patriarchy/misogyny we can find.

Kal ho na ho is a film filled with extremely strong gender roles even though me might not see it upfront.

Written by Karan Johar and director by Nikhil Advani, Kal Ho Na Ho is the story of an ordinary MBA student Naina, who falls in love with Aman, the most charming, happy and might I add nosey cancer patient. Another very important character in this film is Rohit who is Naina’s friend.

Somehow through the course of the film we see Aman convince Rohit that Naina is actually the love of his life and emotionally manipulates him to make Rohit fully believe that he is actually in love with Naina. Naina on the other hand is in love with Aman who lies to her telling him that he is actually married and has no interest in her. Why does he do this? Because he believes that if Naina finds out that he is actually dying, it would break her heart and hurt her so much that it is okay to manipulate her into falling in love with Rohit as well. Here we see how Aman denies her agency by not letting her make any decisions by herself.

Another thing we notice about the male protagonist is that he is an extremely invasive character, he somehow involves himself into Naina’s family business, he keeps inviting himself into situations that involves Naina’s family and casually spews insults at naina for being boring and uninteresting. Aman’s interfering and misogynistic behaviour might be entertaining for the audience but if the roles were reversed and if we had a female character who behaved the same way he did the reaction would have been to laugh at her instead of with her.

Through all of this we still see Naina chose Aman as her first choice ven though we have Rohit who now believes that he is in love with her treating her correctly and well instead of the constant insults and shaming we hear from Aman. To top it all of we now have Naina’s mother herself feeding into this misogyny but telling Naina the only way she can become a woman is by marrying someone who loves her, even if she doesn’t love them.

I find it quite interesting to see that the writer of this story, karan johar who is known to be quite open about his sexuality has given into the typical strong, charming male lead and weak, boring female lead- trope to cater to the mainstream Indian audience.

Written by a Indian male we clearly see how female relationships are interpreted (Naina keeps fat shaming her best friend) and how the mainstream audience finds it amusing when leading men are conceited and invasive, but when a leading woman behaves the same way, they are considered stuck up, snobby and “a pain to deal with”