The film is full of strong names from the current theatre and film industry: Anup Baral, Dayahang Rai, Arpan Thapa, Saugat Malla and Aashant Sharma. It’s known that the beatings during the film are real. When the film opens, we see an army officer, Dayahang Rai, interrogating a masked man. The questioning is followed by equal measures of beatings and verbal abuse. Prisoners are doled out both these abuses in abundance throughout the film.[break]
Much of the scenes are captured in mid shots and close-ups, perhaps to let us come closer to the plight of the prisoners and the intensity of the interrogators.
The viewer will constantly be reminded of the fact that Anup Baral is very much the theatre actor. An excellent one, no doubt, but the pacing and the expressive movements seem much too large for the silver screen.
Aashant Sharma is quite the surprise. His presence is not very long but he does put up a fine performance. We see him as a soldier coming to check the sleeping prisoners who then rouses them up and makes them sing for him. After he bids them to sleep, he comes in to wake them again and punishes them by making them stand up all night. This also makes the viewer understand that it was one of the abuses suffered by the prisoners.
Almost the entire portion of the film introduces us to masked men in captivity. As the name suggests, Badhshala is kept within the boundaries of the dirty prison house. We don’t see how the men get there. The prisoners are threatened to confess crimes, divulge names and locations, their families are constantly used as emotional baits, and they’re forced to sign false confessions.
There are two prominent characters amongst the prisoners in the film: one who constantly states that he is innocent and the other who claims to be a Maoist upfront. As the film progresses and the abuses continue, these prisoners seem to get stronger in spirit while their physical condition weakens. We see each of them even develop a certain kind of relationship with Dayahang and Anup.
The vengeful and seemingly bloodthirsty officer that is Arpan Thapa is a contrast to Anup’s softhearted Major. He gets more and more agitated as the Maoist revolutionary, Saugat Malla, continues to defy.
Badhshala is unsatisfying in many points. Not much time has gone by when the film breaks for interval, it doesn’t show us concretely how the innocence of the prisoner was found to be so, the brief presence of women prisoners towards the end appear like an afterthought, and the ending also is quite unimpressive. We’re left to fill in the gaps by ourselves. Pandit has worked to show us the conditions of the prisoners taken in by the army, and while we learn quite a few things from watching the film, we’re still left with an unsatisfied feeling at the end.
Related story
Super-satisfying 6-ingredient comfort-food
