Search of Susanna

Search of Susanna
Anindita Kuity

How far would you go in your search for meaning of 'true love' in life? How would you react, if your quest remains unfulfilled and shrouded in reversion and betrayal? Vishal Bhardwaj, throwing moral precept, seems to unlock the hidden answers in our sub-conscious, portrays a surly star, which vindicates the above questionnaire in a human pyramid of noir. In 7 Khoon Maaf, the film maker creates an intensely dark tale of crime and passion in celluloid, taking a leap from his earlier adaptation of Shakespearean tragedies.

The film is a fascinating tale of a beautiful woman, Susanna, who over the course of thirty-five years got entangled in 7 marriages, due to the mysterious deaths of her husbands. In depicting Susanna's story, the avant-garde director shows a rare understanding of gender dynamics and sexual tensions as he successfully brings life to the wretchedly unfulfilled, deeply dysfunctional Susanna (played by Priyanka Chopra), who has discovered that in this world there's no true love to offer her.

In her endeavour in seeking 'true love', she was rived with unpalatable miscarriage of justice. Her face shows the intense shock and grief of a tortured soul, when she discovers the betrayal of each of her husbands. Resting on her body on the thick rope of an old bell tower, Susanna's blank face seems to suggest a life of sinister suppression and unspoken thoughts.

She cringes and almost draws her audience into agreeing with her actions of killing her husbands as the only way of getting rid from the socio-physical torment, opprobrium, as for her the death of a relationship means the death of the person, quite literally. She creates a paradox, an obnoxious moral fulcrum: 'She may be a murderer but is she evil?'

In her dreary dangerously destructive journey from a loving woman to an incorrigibly petulant lady and serial killer, Susanna sheds light to the plight of every woman wronged, who have pledged by their spouses eternal love and happiness- ''Either by a two timing husband, a wife beating husband, a murderous husband, a husband who treats his wife as a sex-object. The poor soul has no option but to end her anguish, any way.''

Her journey of finding true love and her failed marriages makes her realize the futility of an impossible ideal, yet her attempts of seducing the person who is almost like a son to her, as a last recourse shows her desperation and insatiable hunger for love and affection.

At the end she cries out in epiphany- '' This heart of mine, it is to blame.'' Amidst the hubbub of 'moral justice', she brings a profound sense of tragic grandeur, as she slips from self-gratification to delusional spirituality. She is not a villain, but neither a 'hero'- she is merely a victim of the illusion and emotion that life creates around her.

Bibliography
1) The Times of India : 7 Khoon Maaf Review
2) Subhash K Jha : 7 Khoon Maaf Review