{"product_id":"mirch-masala-smita-patil-dvd","title":"Mirch Masala (Smita Patil) [DVD]","description":"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFollowing its commercial release in New York this became Mehta's best-known\u003cbr\u003e\nfilm outside India. Intended as an allegory of colonial oppression but\u003cbr\u003e\npresented as a sex-and-violence drama, the film is set in pre-Independence\u003cbr\u003e\nSaurashtra. The despotic tax collector Subedar (Shah), dressed in a way that\u003cbr\u003e\nevokes British 19th C. catchpenny prints and Daumier's cartoons, imposes his\u003cbr\u003e\nrule on a village. All the villagers try to satisfy his every whim, except for\u003cbr\u003e\nthe protesting schoolteacher (Gilani). the drama starts when the beautiful\u003cbr\u003e\nSonbai (Patil) is to be surrendered to the lecherous Subedar. She takes refuge\u003cbr\u003e\nin the courtyard of a spice factory run entirely by women and is proteted by\u003cbr\u003e\nan aged watchman (Om Puri) who closes the gates to subedar's men. Although\u003cbr\u003e\nmade in Hindi, the film draws on Gujarati verbal and performative idioms.\u003cbr\u003e\nMehta explicitly deployed stock literary melodrama characters, but these\u003cbr\u003e\ncliches from contemporary popular culture lack the historical resonance\u003cbr\u003e\nachieved by the more complex figures Mehta used in his extraordinary Bhavni\u003cbr\u003e\nBhavai(1980).","brand":"Format: DVD","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44644155523238,"sku":"Z4-7TEV-0JWK","price":45.84,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/mahaekart.com\/products\/mirch-masala-smita-patil-dvd","provider":"Mahaekart LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}