No matter how good Sushmita Sen is as Gauri Sawant, authenticity is a difficult task in the film Taali

Review of Taali: The narrative is strong, but the presentation is basic

In Taali, a biographical drama written by Arjun Singh Baran and Kartik D. Nishandar and directed by Ravi Jadhav, Sushmita Sen portrays transgender activist Gauri Sawant. Unreserved appreciation should be given to the lead actor for the poise and vigor with which he inhabits the nuanced character. Despite having many commendable aspects, the six-episode JioCinema series is oddly dull.

The most emotionally taxing of these events was Gauri Sawant’s estrangement from her policeman-father (played superbly by Nandu Madhav), which is how the show assembles the major turning points of her tumultuous life. She has to deal with her physical and emotional confusions, and the fact that she grows up in a conservative setting makes the process all the more difficult.

Gauri must face hostile forces both inside and beyond the transgender community as she transforms from a girl trapped in a boy’s body yearning for acceptance into a confident transwoman to file a petition before the Supreme Court of India for recognition of her community as the third gender. There are pimps and owners of brothels on the one hand. On the other hand, she is hindered by self-appointed orthodoxy guardians and powerful individuals (one of whom is the dean of a hospital, played by Ananth Mahadevan, who takes the brunt of her agression).

Gauri’s journey toward claiming her gender identification is rife with controversy. She cultivates both allies and foes. She gravitates toward advocacy aimed at safeguarding the legal rights of transgenders as her network grows and her fame grows. 

The information about the Gauri Sawant case is widely known. Taali helps to raise awareness of third gender goals and refute myths that have kept society from treating them with the respect they deserve as citizens of a free country, thus the recounting does not feel superfluous.

The six episodes of Taali have enough narrative substance to support them, but the script falls a little short in its failure to take a proper deep dive into the world of the transgender community and inform the audience of those aspects of their lives that are not already known (often in distorted ways) or fully appreciated.

We are aware that they are subjected to sexual exploitation, abused by the police and other branches of the government, and made to endure the “stigma” of being different. A bit more information on their inner drives and the specifics of Gauri Sawant’s private and public struggle to bring people like her on an equal footing with the country’s binary population would have given the series much more impact.    

To be fair, the lead actress and the director, working from a story by Kshitij Patwardhan, avoid hyperbole and exaggeration while highlighting the nature of the battle Gauri Sawant had to fight for a marginalized group. For the most part, the series benefits from the constraint.   

Taali, however, never delves deeper into the protagonist’s conflicts with herself, her family, her society, her town, and the law. The show explores the big ideas surrounding the reality of being different in a setting where the cis majority defines normality.

Taali raises the inevitable question: wouldn’t it have been preferable if a real-life transgender actress had performed the lead role? Susmita Sen fits right in because she paints a believable picture of someone who underwent a sex change operation when it was still a relatively uncommon treatment in India and went on to become the voice of all transgender people. However, complete authenticity is a difficult ask in this case, regardless of how brilliant she is as Gauri Sawant.   

The majority of the first episode of Taali takes place outside the Supreme Court of India, where Gauri’s appeal is set to be heard. The story alternates between the present and her traumatic past as the program attempts to paint a complete picture of a remarkable life.

A large portion of the story is based on a conversation Gauri has with a journalist (Maya Rachel McManus), which serves as a framing device for a sequence of flashbacks that show Ganesh’s metamorphosis into Gauri. a classroom. Ganesh is questioned about his career goals by a teacher. I want to become a mommy, the boy answers.

He is silenced by the teacher. She claims that boys cannot be moms. As Ganesh’s ego develops, the desire to have children becomes a central theme.

In a pivotal sequence, Nargis (Sheetal Kale), a transgender woman, storms out of a meeting called by homosexual rights campaigner Ganesh (Ankur Bhatia) because Ganesh/Gauri isn’t truly like them. Nargis urges you to transform yourself on the inside as much as the outward.

That causes Ganesh to reflect. It forces him to change the way he views himself and proceed logically to physically recreate himself. Although the change is the subject of a few scenes, the series chooses to keep an objective distance from it rather than explore its more in-depth psychological aspects. Because of this, Taali isn’t as successful a series as it might be.

That came from Ravi Jadhav, which caught me off guard. The director is known for producing outliers who bravely face social insensitivity, if not open scorn, and continue to live their lives. In fact, Taali expands on the gender discussion from Jadhav’s first film, Natarang (2009), about a tamasha actor who, to the dismay of his community and audience, changes himself into a nachya, an overtly feminine dancer.

In a more recent movie, Nude (2018), Jadhav examined the struggles of a lady who moves from her village to Mumbai, works as a nude model in an art school to pay for her son’s education, and encounters inescapable difficulties. Both Natarang and Nude featured fictional protagonists, but both movies dealt with issues that were deeply ingrained in the realities of a conservative, anti-change society.   

Jadhav should have been motivated to raise the bar a few notches after seeing the real-life model for Taali, a fearless person who overcame numerous obstacles to pave the road forward for thousands of people in her position. He acts in opposition. Taali delivers statements that are obviously significant, but she does so in an unappealingly dull manner. The treatment is bland, but the story is strong.

Cast:

Ankur Bhatia, Sushmita Sen, Krutika Deo, and Hemangi Kavi

Director:

Vijay Jadhav